SECOND SHIFT · FROM THE FIELD
Detroit, Michigan · Nonprofit reentry services · Peer mentoring
Original reporting: Jay Scott Smith, WDIV Local 4 · September 24, 2026 · Photojournalist Jeff Jewell
Delenia Howell, 36, is a peer leader at Nation Outside, a Southwest Detroit nonprofit that supports people returning from incarceration, WDIV Local 4 reports. She spent the past three years rebuilding her life, and she told WDIV she was skeptical of the group until she learned that its staff had been through what she had.
Howell was among six people charged in connection with the December 2020 death of Jason Foster, her ex-boyfriend and the father of her three children, in Eastpointe. She accepted a plea agreement in November 2022 and served three years as an accessory, according to the report. She was paroled in 2023, and her sentence was discharged in December 2024.
“I never ever wanted to be away from my kids, and I feel like I made a decision to be around the wrong people,” she told WDIV.
Nation Outside’s leadership is made up of formerly incarcerated people. Executive director Cecilia Zavala told WDIV that Howell shows what happens when someone is supported and given a second chance.
Location Decision takeaway
Peer roles let people put lived experience to work while guiding others through reentry. Their durability depends on steady funding for the small nonprofits that employ them, which makes those organizations part of a region’s workforce system.
Second Shift tells the stories of people building what’s next through new skills, new careers and second chances. From the Field items are curated from credited reporting, with Location Decision’s perspective. Location Decision Originals are independently reported by our team.
Curated by Location Decision. Originally reported by Jay Scott Smith, WDIV Local 4, September 24, 2026; photojournalist Jeff Jewell.
This item was sourced and drafted with AI assistance and reviewed under Location Decision’s editorial standards. Second Shift tracks workforce outcomes to inform our broader editorial analysis. All reporting belongs to the credited journalists; read the original story for the full account.