Modello, A Story of Hope for the Inner City and Beyond: An Inside-Out Model of Prevention and Resiliency in Action

Modello is the true story from beginning to end of how Dr. Roger Mills and staff accomplished the “miracle” in the Modello and Homestead Gardens Housing Projects, applying the Three Principles/Health Realization approach based on a new spiritual psychology. Through extensive interviews with residents as well as Dr. Mills, his staff and other professionals, a very compelling and moving portrait is painted of how two low-income, inner-city housing projects replete with violence, crack, drug gangs, abuse, welfare dependency and hopelessness were completely turned around within two-and-a-half years. This book shows how people who lived in the most difficult circumstances were reached, came to find hope and changed their lives. “In all my years in prevention I have never seen this level of change in people!” It is a truly inspirational story. The lives of people on whom society has given up were completely turned around. At the same time it is a sociological study. It shows how a new and different inside-out, spiritual paradigm, which on the surface seems too simple and backwards to possibly work in such overwhelming conditions, can produce incredible results and create changes in people’s lives that stand head and shoulders above the traditional outside-in paradigm for prevention, human services, social work, community development and education. It has vast implications for improving humanity’s social ills. About the Author: Jack Pransky, Ph.D. is founder/director of the Center for Inside-Out Understanding. He authored the books, Somebody Should Have Told Us!: Simple Truths for Living Well, Parenting from the Heart, Prevention from the Inside-Out; Prevention: The Critical Need and co-authored Healthy Thinking/ Feeling/Doing from the Inside-Out prevention curriculum for middle school students. Pransky has worked in the field of prevention since 1968 in a wide variety of capacities and now provides consultation, training, counseling and coaching from the inside-out, throughout the U.S. and internationally. He is also cofounder/director of the nonprofit consulting organization, Prevention Unlimited, which created the Spirituality of Prevention Conference. In 2001 his book, Modello received the Martin Luther King Storyteller’s Award for the book best exemplifying King’s vision of “the beloved community,” and in 2004 Jack won the Vermont Prevention Pioneer’s Award. Jack can be contacted through his website at www.healthrealize.com.