The RARE Experience is a transformative Systems Simulation that immerses participants in the complex, often unseen realities of navigating life after system involvement. This is not a game or a mere training—it is an awakening. Through lived-experience design and interactive storytelling, participants step into the shoes of system-impacted individuals and confront the barriers, decisions, and systemic pressures that shape every step of the reentry journey.

The Foundation: The Reentry Model

At the core of the simulation is our Reentry Model, which recreates the first precarious 30 days after release.
Participants attempt to:

• Secure identification

• Obtain stable employment

• Attend supervision appointments

• Access transportation

• Manage fines and fees

• Secure basic needs such as food, housing, and healthcare

This foundational model exposes a hard truth: reentry is not a simple checklist. It is a maze of conflicting demands and limited options, where one missed appointment or one unexpected cost can collapse everything.

The Reentry Model sets the stage—revealing how fragmented, under-resourced systems shape a person’s possibilities long before personal motivation is even considered.

Interconnected System Models

Beyond the core reentry journey, the simulation expands into a series of interconnected models. Each one reflects a system that profoundly impacts a person’s stability, identity, and survival. Together, they demonstrate how no system operates in isolation—and how their combined weight can either crush potential or open pathways to empowerment.

Mental Health Model

Participants encounter the realities of accessing care while navigating stigma, cost, waitlists, and crisis points.
This model highlights how untreated mental health needs can ripple through employment, supervision compliance, relationships, and overall stability.

Immigration Model

This model reveals the intersection of legal status, documentation barriers, language access, and financial strain.
Participants experience how immigration challenges intensify the reentry process and limit access to housing, employment, benefits, and safety.

Family Balancing Act Model

Participants juggle parenting, caregiving responsibilities, school requirements, and financial pressures.
This model lays bare the impossible choices many families face: work or childcare, supervision or safety, survival or connection.

Housing Insecurities Model

Housing instability is one of the strongest predictors of reentry success or failure.
Here, participants confront:

• Waitlists

• Eligibility restrictions

• System-caused evictions

• Over-policing

• High costs and low availability

This model exposes how housing is not simply a resource—it is a point of leverage that can determine freedom, security, and survival.

Peer Support Model

Our newest and most impactful dimension places lived experience at the center.
Peer facilitators—individuals who have personally navigated these systems—lead with honesty, compassion, and cultural insight.
This model demonstrates:

• The power of peer leadership

• How healing-centered support differs from punitive systems

• The role of community in restoring hope and dignity

It is a reminder that transformation becomes possible when those who have walked the road are allowed to guide it.

A Systemic Symphony

Each model tells a powerful story, but together they illustrate the full ecosystem that shapes the lives of system-impacted individuals.
Participants witness how:

• One barrier triggers another

• Small setbacks become crises

• Systems often work against—not with—each other

• A person’s success depends not just on effort, but on access, equity, and understanding

• Collaboration and compassion change outcomes more than punishment ever could

This interconnected design reveals that reentry is not an individual failure—it is a systemic landscape.

A Tool for Transformation

The RARE Experience equips:

• Employers

• Government agencies

• Nonprofits

• Educators

• Funders

• Community leaders

with insight that goes far beyond traditional training.

Participants leave with:

• A deeper empathy for system-impacted individuals

• A clearer understanding of how systemic fragmentation harms real lives

• A renewed commitment to trauma-informed, collaborative solutions

• The vision to build more equitable and restorative policies and programs
  
  

Whether engaging with the foundational Reentry Model or exploring the full suite of interconnected systems, the RARE Experience transforms knowledge into understanding—and understanding into action.

It is not just information.
It is illumination.

And it is the beginning of a new way forward.