Program Assistant
Carlos Alonzo Avila was born in Honduras. He came to the United States at the age of nine. He was incarcerated at the age of seventeen and served twenty-five years. He connected with Free Minds while incarcerated in 2009 and has been a member ever since. During his incarceration, he enrolled in the Challenge Program and the Residential Drug Abuse Program, residential treatment programs that dealt with substance abuse and mental health, becoming a mentor in both. In 2020, Carlos was released under DC’s Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act, a law that provides young people with extreme sentences a mechanism for resentencing. Carlos now resides in his birth country, where he works remotely as a co-facilitator for Free Minds’ community peacebuilding initiative, On the Same Page. He finds healing in storytelling, and loves making connections between his fellow Free Minds members and the wider community.