Site Content

The National Organization for Anti-Recidivism and Economic Opportunity, Inc. is a non-governmental non-profit organization founded by Shamari J. Lewis who at the age of 12 in 1992 was considered an endangered species. Having grown up in the eighties and nineties in the midst of the crack cocaine epidemic when according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Aspen Institute, one in five African American males were expected to be in prison on probation on parole or even dead all before the age of twenty five, and it should be alarming to consider that one in five is now one in three dead before 25. Our founder started working at age 12 and invested in his first company at 19. He’s a successful social entrepreneur and has served as a zoning and land use lobbyist. He volunteers with youth and civil rights organizations. And as an American male of African descent, he experienced foster care as a child and prison as an adult. And because of his unique ability to relate and communicate with all demographics from the crack house to the United States Department of Agriculture he has committed himself to ending recidivism as a response to a mandate he received from God during his period of incarceration. 

During his last period of incarceration Shamari asked the Lord what he could do to take that situation and make it work to the favor of the people who were there imprisoned and he asked God to allow that action to align with His will and the life purpose for which he was sent. Shamari confessed to the lord in that cell that he was finished being outside of God’s will for his life, a life where the grace of God was always evident to Shamari from an early age.

And there during that moment of total transparency with God and himself the Lord revealed to him that he should take his entire life’s experience and use the knowledge and wisdom of God to be a voice for the meek and a shield for the humble and as God revealed this reason for sending him into the world and the reason He had been trying to get Shamari’s attention, he accepted Gods mandate to serve His people and then the Lord spoke to him and told Him to open the Bible, he obeyed and that’s where God revealed the scripture Luke 4:18 in the NKJV: To preach the gospel to the poor. To heal the brokenhearted. To proclaim liberty to the captives. The recovery of sight to the blind. To set at liberty those who are oppressed.. And when Shamari accepted that revelation he asked the Lord how and by what means shall he do this and God told him by forming an association that galvanizes the disenfranchised in the same manner in which others have unions. And right then and there in that cell in 2019 Shamari promised the Lord that he would trust in Him to bring about the fulfillment of His promises and that he would obediently follow His laws and precepts as long as he lives. Shamari is honoring the commitment that he made to God in exchange for his release from prison. To this end Shamari has obtained from Harvard Division of Continuing Education and Professional Development, Influence and Persuasion in Leadership Certification and from Duke University Division of Continuing Studies Nonprofit Management Certification.