News

Section Menu

Search

Showing Up

Portland Magazine

December 12, 2023

In August, the yard at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville was set up with carnival games, a bouncy house, live music, basketball hoops, haircut-and braiding-stations, back-to-school prep, a barbeque, and Kona Ice. It didn’t exactly look like a women’s prison yard. The event, aptly named “Through a Child’s Eyes” (TACE), is now in its twentieth year, and is so successful that other prisons across the state have used it as a model. The goal is for children to have fun with their moms, and for the moms, who are adults in custody at Coffee Creek, to have an opportunity to continue to nurture that bond.

Kyle Bunch ’09, ’11 organized and budgeted this summer’s TACE event. He is on the community prison advisory council and involved in the Coffee Creek Academy, which offers job training, secular and spiritual counseling, and a financial literacy curriculum.

By day, Kyle sells insurance. He studied biology and religion at UP, earned his Master of Arts in Teaching at UP as well, and for a while he taught high school biology and religion in Louisiana and Portland. But life takes you in different directions. “I’m surprised how much I use my education degree. I really want my clients to understand their policy. Most people don’t understand what they have.” He feels the work he does—both at Coffee Creek and in his insurance work—boils down to the value of relationships and showing up for people.