How Mark Wahlberg’s Brother Helps Former Inmates Find Work
By Movieguide® Contributor
Mark and Donnie Wahlberg’s brother Jim Wahlberg is helping former inmates find work.
Jim runs a print shop called K12Print with co-owners John Kilburg and John DiDonato, and the team has decided to hire people who have formerly been incarcerated.
Wahlberg personally understands the struggles former inmates go through. When he was younger, he struggled with a drug and alcohol addiction. He “served five years for armed robbery and was sentenced to another six to nine years for breaking and entering,” The Palm Beach Post reported.
While in prison, he met Mother Teresa, an interaction that changed his life.
“The way I look at it is God sent his No. 1 assistant on Earth to help me,” Wahlberg said. “In my limited capacity, I thought I was looking at God.”
“I thought she was God. That’s my understanding of who she was at that moment,” he told Fox News. “Once I had this experience—that the missing element for me to try to live a different life was a relationship with Christ—other things made sense to me…It made sense to me that I could be sober and live a different way when I got out of prison.”
As she ministered at the prison, Mother Teresa revealed that she too struggled with not feeling worthy of God’s love or the immense admiration from people.
“I witnessed true humility,” Wahlberg recalled.
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Wahlberg explained how something about him changed after that experience.
“After having this experience with Mother Teresa, I ran back to the priest and said, ‘I need to know more about this Jesus she’s talking about,’” said Wahlberg. “It’s not what I grew up with. I want to—I need to know more about this Jesus who died for me and who loves me in spite of all the things I’ve done wrong.’”
From then on, he made it his mission to help those who were once in a position like he was.
“Only God can take your deficits and the ugliness about you and turn that into assets,” he said.
For one former inmate, Angel Penalver, Wahlberg’s print shop was the only place that would hire him.
“It was hard,” Penalver said of his job search prior. “I was homeless a couple times.”
K12Print also looks for ways to give back to the community. It recently bought a 15-passenger van and several laptops for the local Boys and Girls Clubs of Palm Beach County.