GilbertStarleigh

Gilbert Starleigh continues to support faith-based Good News Outreach in Tallahassee, Florida

Second Chance Prison Ministries’ Gilbert Starleigh celebrates more than a decade with Tallahassee-based nonprofit organization, Good News Outreach.

Working with Good News Outreach to provide expertise in assisting in the opening and management of inmate transition homes, Gilbert Starleigh has spent more than a decade at the Tallahassee-based organization. Good News Outreach is, Starleigh says, dedicated to reducing hunger, homelessness, and isolation among those in need by providing food, shelter, and social interaction within the community.

“I’ve worked for approximately 12 years with Good News Outreach, a faith-based organization located in Tallahassee, Florida,” explains Gilbert Starleigh, speaking from his home in the north of the Leon County city, famed for its theaters, museums, parks, performing arts centers, and more.

Good News Outreach is a nonprofit organization that strives to reduce hunger, homelessness, and isolation among those in need by providing food, shelter, and social interaction through collaborative efforts within local Tallahassee communities, according to Gilbert Starleigh.

Gilbert Starleigh’s particular area of expertise within the organization, he says, has always centered around assisting in opening and managing inmate transition homes for formerly incarcerated men as they begin their journeys toward becoming contributing members of society. “We accomplished this, in part, through a partnership with the Florida Department of Corrections,” explains Starleigh. “These homes,” he goes on, “are known as the Mercy Houses.”

Good News Outreach’s Mercy House transition homes, Gilbert Starleigh reports, supply housing, food, and social support, as well as employment and educational opportunities via a wealth of community outreach resources.

Gilbert Starleigh is currently a registered Florida Department of Corrections Volunteer Minister, which allows him access to all of the agency’s prisons. Elsewhere, Starleigh is also the director of Second Chance Prison Ministries, based at Fellowship Baptist Church in Tallahassee. Here, too, the inmate transition expert has spent upwards of a decade, involved in all capacities, he says, for approximately 13 years.

Although now retired from day-to-day involvement with Good News Outreach, via his directorship of Second Chance Prison Ministries, Gilbert Starleigh still directly refers many men in need of support leaving the Florida prison system to the Mercy House scheme. “Many of these men,” Gilbert Starleigh says, “would be homeless if not for the services of Good News Outreach and the care provided at the organization’s transitional homes.”

Outside of his work with Good News Outreach and Second Chance Prison Ministries, Gilbert Starleigh—known to his friends as Gil—is the owner of Barnes & Starleigh Properties. Experienced in auto sales and repair, Gilbert ‘Gil’ Starleigh also serves in a general managerial capacity on behalf of a local used car dealership in his home city of Tallahassee, Florida, and is an approximately 15-year member of nearby Fellowship Baptist Church. Home to the Second Chance Prison Ministries initiative of which Gilbert is a director, Fellowship Baptist Church is a family of faith dedicated to loving God and loving others, where Gilbert Starleigh and fellow congregation members are committed to honoring Lord Jesus with their lives.