Luzerne, Pennsylvania
Dress for Success
Not long ago, Linda Armstrong-Loop, Founder and CEO of the Luzerne County branch of Dress for Success, received a letter from an inmate at a women’s correctional facility she’d provided library books to through a program Armstrong-Loop started. The letter was deeply meaningful to her, as it showed that the work she was doing was directly benefiting the women she most wanted to help. The letter details how the inmate had read three books since she’d been placed in the correctional facility two and a half months prior.
All three novels were mysteries, and the letter shares, in clean and graceful penmanship, not just the stories of the three books, but how they had given the inmate moments of pleasure and peace. “Not only did these three books help me to pass the time,” wrote the inmate, “but they also helped me to realize that when I’m released, I need to go home to my family. I’ve been running the streets for the past three years in active addiction. These books were a reminder how important family is and how a family’s love is always stronger than any of life’s obstacles. The common theme in these books is family reuniting, and I realize that it’s time to reunite with mine. I want to thank you for providing books for us and for all of your hard work, it is greatly appreciated, and it does not go unnoticed. I truly thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
It’s clear that the work Armstrong-Loop is doing at Dress for Success goes way beyond the organization’s original mission, which was to help unemployed and underemployed women achieve economic independence by providing professional attire.
“I’ve always known how to work, how to get a job. And if I could help other women do it, then that’s what I needed to do. So, I started volunteering for Dress for Success in 1997 while I was working as an associate vice president with Prudential. Eventually, I was able to work for Dress for Success in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and by 2010, I was opening Dress for Success here in Luzerne.”
Since then, Armstrong-Loop has helped more than 1,250 women seeking employment, often through the 43 referral partner agencies Dress for Success works with in the community. “Those partnerships vary from welfare to work programs, domestic violence and homeless shelters, and drug and alcohol rehabs. And many more,” Armstrong-Loop explains. “When those organizations feel their clients are job-ready or in need of something to wear for an interview, they’ll send me a referral and we’ll make contact to welcome the woman in. There’s collaboration all over. Working together is the only way we can make a real difference.”
One of those partners is the Luzerne County Correctional Facility, from which Armstrong-Loop often receives phone calls when a prisoner is being released, so she can assist them with clothing and other services as quickly as possible, hopefully before the inmate returns to previous negative habits. This partnership with the Luzerne County Correctional Facility has also brought Armstrong-Loop into the inmates’ lives as a certified recovery specialist and through programs such as Project Clean Break and Saturdays for Success, both of which she began herself after witnessing the clear need for additional services. “If I can start helping the inmates before they’re released, why wouldn’t I? I can get them before the gate this way. Even if it’s something as small as working on life skills, communication, or vision boards, the goal is to get them to imagine bigger lives for themselves,” says Armstrong-Loop. “I want to help restore hope and hope comes in different ways. The library program began with an inmate telling me that books would make her life better.”
When the request came in, the only books the facility had were GED prep books and spiritual texts, but before long Armstrong-Loop was getting the inmates everything from Spanish-language paperbacks to mysteries, all through donations and partnerships with other organizations.
The prison library now has more than 3,600 books, a number Armstrong-Loop hopes will only continue to rise, along with the number of women she’s able to dress and help find sustainable employment. “I try not to see the barriers, instead I see the ways to overcome them,” she says. “Dress for Success opens a path. If a woman comes in and says she wants to be a nurse’s assistant, I ask her why she doesn’t want to try being a doctor. And then I see if I can get her there. I want them to reach for the stars!”