{"id":8035,"date":"2019-02-27T17:06:18","date_gmt":"2019-02-27T17:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2019\/03\/21\/jerry-blassingame\/"},"modified":"2022-09-07T15:19:23","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T19:19:23","slug":"jerry-blassingame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/jerry-blassingame\/","title":{"rendered":"Furman hosts author, Soteria CEO Jerry Blassingame in talk March 19"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jerry Blassingame, author, company founder and criminal justice reform advocate, will speak about his book \u201cReclaimed: A Story of Second Chances\u201d Tuesday, March 19, at 5:30 p.m. in the Furman University Bookstore located in the Trone Student Center on the Furman campus.<\/p>\n

\"Jerry

Blassingame is hosted by Furman’s Collaborative for Community-Engaged Learning.<\/p><\/div>\n

His talk is free and open to the public and is sponsored by the Collaborative for Community-Engaged Learning at Furman. The author will be available to sign books following his presentation.<\/p>\n

Blassingame was a self-described child of poverty who witnessed the fall of friends and family before getting ensnared in a life of crime. Now he is executive director of a community development corporation that houses, feeds and trains men coming out of prison with skills to join the workforce. His book, \u201cReclaimed,\u201d describes what that transition looks like.<\/p>\n

On his website, Blassingame says \u201cReclaimed\u201d is a story for all people\u2014no matter your race or social status.\u201d A woodworker and teacher, Blassingame explains the title of his book\u2014\u201cWhen something that was once considered not worth saving suddenly finds worth again, we call it Reclaimed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blassingame is founder of Soteria Community Development Corporation and Senior Pastor of Soteria Christian Fellowship. He aims to empower individuals and the community through education, affordable housing, financial literacy, community, and economic development and entrepreneurship. His passion is assisting individuals who have been incarcerated through reentry and helping them to become productive citizens.<\/p>\n

For more information visit http:\/\/jerryblassingame.com\/<\/a>. Or contact Mike Winiski, executive director, Community-Engaged Learning, at 864-294-2451, and mike.winiski@furman.edu<\/a>. Or contact the Furman News and Information office at 864-294-3107.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jerry Blassingame, author, company founder and criminal justice reform advocate, will speak about his book \u201cReclaimed: A Story of Second Chances\u201d Tuesday, March 19, at 5:30 p.m. in the Furman […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":257,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/257"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}