We recently connected with Anita Wadhwa and have shared our conversation below.

Anita, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Many years ago, I developed a youth led restorative justice program at a school in Spring Branch ISD. The heart of the program was the leadership class, a year long elective where students sat in Circle every day, read texts about restorative justice, and learned how to keep (facilitate) Circles for building community and addressing conflict in the school. Our capstone project was the Story of Self, an assignment based on Marshall Ganz’s Public Narrative coursework for community organizing. This narrative was an opportunity for students to share how restorative justice has impacted them personally.

Leadership students Xavier Chavez and another student I will call Roman were in rival gangs. I did not know this as they kept their hatred for one another very quiet. After Roman shared his story of self, Xavier approached him in front of the entire class and said, “I have so much in common with you. We came up in the same way. We need to stop all this…let’s start a movement.” Then, they hugged. I decided we did need to band together, not only as students and teachers, but as youth and adults in the community who could offer an alternative vision to the current punitive education and criminal justice systems.

This became the motto (and rallying statement) for the Restorative Justice Collaborative of Houston. Formed in 2013, our goal was to create a network of restorative justice practitioners who would be able to address conflict and build community around Houston. We were interested in dismantling the school to prison pipeline and promoting relational schooling.

Restorative justice refers to the core belief that humans are interconnected and that after a harm, justice and accountability occurs when all impacted parties decide what can be done to right a wrong; after such a process, the dignity and humanity of all participants can be restored. Circles are one way to convene the community and practice restorative justice.

I quit teaching in May 2024 and turned the collaborative into a 501C3 called Restorative Houston. Our mission is to train an intergenerational cohort in Houston (and beyond) in Circles and restorative justice so that they can offer tools for building community and repairing harm at the individual, relational, and institutional level. We offer monthly drop in Circles for community building, trainings, and safe spaces for LGBTQ+ youth, boys, girls, elders, and family members of incarcerated folks.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Restorative justice is personal to me. It is part of generational healing. My father and all my grandparents were refugees during the Partition of India. Because of their religion, they were forced out of their homes in Pakistan and crossed an arbitrary border. Twenty million people were displaced, and rape and murder were rampant in the process. However, growing up and visiting relatives in Punjab and New Delhi, no one ever talked about this history.

Born and raised in Houston, I lived in Ohio for only one year before my father decided there was too much racism, and he returned to Texas. I was teased daily and demeaned for the hair on my face, my brown skin, and the fact that my parents were immigrants. I internalized a deep self hatred in the process, only emerging out of this trauma in my twenties. I shut down and have had mental health issues since high school, including depression and anxiety.

It is my mission to work with young people to ensure that they take up space and are proud of all aspects of their identity. In high school, I became an environmental and human rights activist, and I was told by teachers that I couldn’t change the world. However, it is only through intergenerational partnerships that we can change the world. Having taught in schools that were either majority Latinx, or racially integrated, I have come to understand the different experiences and intersectionalities of my students. I started teaching through a punitive mindset, asserting my 23 year old self through dominance, not understanding my students’ lived experiences. Over time, as they shared stories in writing and one on one chats, my lens shifted, and I realized I was part of the problem. Every Circle I engage in is an opportunity to ensure that participants, young and old, feel seen, heard, and respected. While I have my healing modalities for my mental health, restorative justice has transformed the way I interact with my ancestors, my parents, my daughters, my students, and myself.

I learned about restorative justice in my doctoral program at Harvard, and participated in over 100 circles at two different high schools in Boston. It has become my mission to transform my hometown through this philosophy. Houston is a restorative justice (RJ) “desert”; while it has one of the largest and most diverse populations in the country, we lack the systems, programs, and infrastructure to offer sustainable replacements to punitive systems. The unmet need for RJ initiatives is urgent, particularly because marginalized communities – particularly those who are Black, Indigenous, People of Color, LGBTQ+, justice impacted, unhoused, or living in poverty – are disproportionately punished in our education and criminal legal systems.

In 2021 the US Department of Education determined that, “About a quarter of the students in HISD (the Houston Independent School District) are Black, but they’re about seven times more likely to end up suspended compared to white students.” This is against the backdrop of a state takeover of HISD where Black and Brown students in the most underfunded schools are having their school libraries replaced with detention centers.

In addition, Houston’s Harris County runs one of the largest jails in the country. As of March 2024, 51% of its population was comprised of Black people, even though they are only 28% of the county’s population (Safety & Justice Challenge).This highlights the need for restorative approaches that address harm, foster accountability, rebuild relationships, and counter racial disparities.

We understand that the people closest to these issues are best equipped to solve them. Our board includes justice impacted folks and a high school student who dropped out of school due to anti-trans school board policies. Our programming centers those at the margins by providing accessible and paid RJ trainings for young people, including Sisterhood Circles for girls of color, who are the most disproportionately adultified and punished in schools. We offer free monthly Circles to build community at a different library in Houston. These are intergenerational and co-facilitated by youth and adults. We train organizations and institutions in Houston on how to build community and repair harm through restorative practices. Finally, we partner with youth detention facilities to invite their students to attend our Circles.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

In order to build my social media, I had to get on social media; I had deleted my instagram and facebook to be more present during the pandemic. So I started over, and opened personal accounts. My organization’s facebook was thankfully still around, so a decade of posts already existed and we had a built-in following from the conferences and events we have put on over the decades.

To recruit new followers, I spoke to young people on my board about what apps and programs were most popular, and attended a training about social media made easy. I had to familiarize myself with how to record content, what content was most engaging on which platforms, and when were the best times to post. I had to learn about accessibility features (like alt text) and how to write engaging captions though the right emojis and hashtags. I began following dozens of pages from similar organizations and paid attention to what caught my eye so I could get inspiration. Finally, I paid for a basic subscription to Capcut and taught myself about editing and using their templates.

Largely this is an experimental journey. I did not think Tik Tok would work for us, but some of our videos of people simply giving testimonials have wracked up the largest amount of likes and led to an increase in our followers. Our presence on LinkedIn – and even posts on Nextdoor – allowed us to successfully fundraise during our first auction.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

My academic training – and working with young people – have built my resilience. In both cases, I have learned to remind myself to not take things personally. My doctoral advisor saw a draft of my thesis, and said practically every word of the 100 pages I submitted needed to be rewritten. I was hurt for a long time, but in the end, she was right. Once I depersonalized the advice and continued writing, I was able to complete a much stronger draft and publish it.

Teaching high schoolers also builds resilience – I had to engage in perspective taking and remember to speak to them in developmentally appropriate ways. When my emotions were activated, I had to talk to trusted adults and calm down, and once again learn to not take actions or words of young people personally.

Both challenges helped make me a stronger leader of a nonprofit. Rejection through calls that are not returned, or grants that are not awarded, is constant. I am able to be steady because of all of our small wins, and when I focus on the community we are creating, I am able to stay afloat.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.restorativehouston.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/restorativehouston/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/restorativehouston/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/restorative-houston

Image Credits

Mamisi Gordon and Anita Wadhwa