Blog Posts

Nancy Cotterill co-founded 2nd Chance Indiana (as UNITE INDY) in late 2016. She was editor and later publisher of Indianapolis Business Journal, and then created a not-for-profit online news outlet for the four million wheelchair users in the U.S. As an award-winning journalist, Nancy uses her talents to promote efforts to fight the causes of overall poverty throughout our area while working to spread the specific message that second chance employment is lowering recidivism, changing lives, and raising families out of poverty.

April 7, 2018

There's a robotic telescope in Chile that has found planets that could support human life. They search for a planet that is in the "Goldilocks zone" or "just right" for human existence.
If you remember your fairy tails, you'll remember the story of the little girl named Goldilocks who stumbled upon a home where three bears lived. Everything she came upon was too big, or too little, or to hot or too cold. Eventually she'd always find a spot that was just right. We live in that place...


March 21, 2018

Last Saturday morning I was really late. I had promised my granddaughter that I would come to North Central High School to watch her show choir compete in state competitions. You know the song, "There is power in the name of Jesus?" Well let me tell you, it's true. I got to the school with something like 12 minutes to go. There were not hundreds of cars, there were thousands of cars...


March 7, 2018

Throw out anything that generates self distain or dislike. Anything that promotes fear or hate. (Which feed on each other.) Get rid of jealousy. According to an 18th century scientist and theologian, Emanuel Swedenborg, we create our own problems because we do not choose our thoughts. Mainly, he says, those negative thoughts about yourself are seeds of unhappiness. And who's to say what's perfect? We are all very different people, but we all play the same game...


February 22, 2018

God chooses the unlikely, for sure. Graham was just a tall scrawny farm kid of 16 when a traveling preacher came through his little town in 1934. He loved baseball and went to church…but Billy's heart was stolen when he was saved. As we look at his life from the vantage point of 2018, it might be hard to remember how huge this man was. How in 1957, in a post-war world that was entering a cold-war world, Graham filled Madison Square Garden for 16 weeks...


February 4, 2018

Jim and I heard someone say "We have become so open-minded, our brains have fallen out". We had a good laugh. But what are we so open minded about? There is still debate about equality of the races, equality between men and women in the workplace, even on the subject of who may join our churches, and who is worthy to receive our charitable acts. While Paul set out some pretty defined do's and don't's about the way Christians should act, Jesus covered all Paul's strict decrees with a softness that made room for the amazing array of human conditions in God's creation...


January 22, 2018

I have been communicating with an inmate at the Putnamville Correctional facility. He wrote me after seeing the Unite Indy insert on "Race Relationships" in the Indianapolis Business Journal, asking if we would connect him with a pastor for spiritual guidance. So, I wrote him back, and he wrote again and it has become a meaningful conversation. I don't know what he did to receive a 20-year sentence, but I know...


January 7, 2018

You can pretty much find out how to do anything by Googling it on your computer, but you won't even have to do that today, because I have supplied everything you need to make 2018 a great year in three easy steps. Here we go....


December 20, 2017

On Christmas of 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. preached the following words: "The next thing we must be concerned about if we are to have peace on earth and good will toward men is the nonviolent affirmation of the sacredness of all human life. Every man is somebody because he is a child of God…Man is more than …whirling electrons or a wisp of smoke …. Man is a child of God, made in His image, and therefore must be respected as such."


December 7, 2017

"If you see a fish go belly up in a lake, you try to find out what was wrong with the fish. You see a thousand fish go belly up in a lake and you better take a look at the lake."


November 21, 2017

Thankfulness did not start--as many Americans think--with the Pilgrims. Thank You are two very powerful words. According to wordsmiths, the English word "thank" derives from the word "think". So the saying used to mean "I will remember what you did." But maybe the first thank you is one that shows up in Luke 17...


Contact Information

2nd Chance Indiana
241 West 38th Street, Indianapolis, IN 46208

317-279-6670

Our Mission

Our mission is to reduce recidivism and rebuild lives through the dignity of work.