KEMPIS (GHANI) SONGSTER

Intergenerational healing (IGHC) Facilitator, Men & Boys

Kempis Songster, also known as Ghani, became the IGHC Facilitator in 2020. He also currently works at the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth (CFSY) as the first Transformative Healing & Restorative Justice Manager. In this role, he is helping CFSY to advance transformative and healing justice models across the nation. He is a founding member of Right to Redemption, the Redemption Project, and the Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration (CADBI), as well as a co-founder and director of Ubuntu Philadelphia. Since his release in 2017 after thirty years in prison – starting when he was 15 years old – Ghani has emerged as an outspoken voice and visionary in Philadelphia’s movement to end mass human caging and to create transformative and restorative responses to harm and violence. During his first three years out, he worked as the Healing Justice Organizer for the Amistad Law Project (ALP), during which time he co-created and hosted ALP’s “Move It Forward” podcast. Ghani spent another three years at the Youth Art & Self-empowerment Project (YASP) as leader of Philadelphia’s first Restorative Justice Diversion program for youth called Healing