Discover the heart of the Restoration & Resilience Alliance. Learn about our collaborative efforts to foster understanding, healing, and empowerment within our community and beyond.
How Covina Community Church Connects Faith to Art
by Incarcerated Artists
Building Bridges Through Art
Covina Community Church (a United Church of Christ) uses art from California state prisons to enrich sermons and highlight special occasions. This collaboration promotes the talent of incarcerated artists, demonstrating their soaring spirits.
Inside Out Art Program
Covina CC offers a “lending library” of prisoners’ donated artworks and sermons by Rev. Lee Yates, aligning with the art’s themes. Several congregations use these for a modest fee, which Covina CC uses to replicate more art. The R&RA supports these opportunities, highlighting art's profound meaning in imprisonment.
The Power of Artistic Expression
Art provides comfort, passion, and inspiration. Those in prison use available materials to express pains, sorrows, joys, and hopes through images drawn from their own stories and dreams. The Restoration & Resilience Alliance seeks to amplify these voices.
"Gallons of Love" For Incarcerated Individuals
In December of 2024, the Covina Community Church in collaboration with R&RA prepared care packages to be delivered to incarcerated individuals housed in the California Institution for Men in Chino. The event went very well and we thank everyone who volunteered their time and efforts to show the men at Chino that we love them and are rooting for their healthy and successful return to the community.
Upcoming Events
Restorative Justice Bookmark Design Contest
This event will be unveiled in September, inviting artists incarcerated in CIM’s Facility C to design bookmarks with Restorative Justice themes. A group of outside artists and faith leaders will select the four bookmark designs to be printed. This will be part of a larger plan to commemorate the opening of a new Restorative Justice Library within existing library space in Facility C.
Restorative Justice Library
On November 19, 2025, Covina CC and the California Institution for Men will unveil a new Restorative Justice Library within existing library space on its Facility C. Using a grant awarded by the Southern California-Nevada Conference (SCNC-UCC) to the church late in 2024, Covina CC is donating approximately $2,500 to purchase and donate 110 new educational volumes (some of them multiple copies, anticipating demand) on Restorative Justice topics. In keeping with prison regulations, all of these volumes will be paperback, to be received directly from authorized vendors only.