My Sister's Keeper Interfaith We are a small, grass roots mentoring ministry that focuses exclusively on the complex needs of women transitioning from jail back into mainstream society. We work exclusively with the Cumberland County Jail in Portland, Maine. We are affiliated with the Maine Council of Churches. Cape Elizabeth United Methodist Church 280 Ocean House Road Cape Elizabeth, Maine 04107M (207) 799-8396

MSKI was founded five years ago when a member of the Cape Elizabeth United Methodist Church in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, shared with the congregation her experiences in helping a local woman who was re-entering community life after incarceration in a county jail. The response from the church community to that moving story was overwhelming and immediate. The result was that the congregation committed to make mentoring a major component of the church's mission work.

The core structure of MSKI is composed of volunteer mentors. The organization is managed by a Director and a Referral Coordinator both at eight hours per week, and an office administrator at 2-4 hours per week. MSKI is funded from a small seed grant made by a private donor in 2004.

There are now five churches in the greater Portland area that are actively working with MSKI. We have helped twenty women in transition over the past five years, twelve alone in the past fifteen months. Clearly, there is a need to expand the program to provide employment and training services for all women who face the immense challenges of reintegration and to reduce alarmingly high rates of recidivism, currently estimated at nearly seventy percent.