As founders of The Freedom to Choose Project, husband-and-wife team Dr. David Paul and Bonnie Paul have worked with thousands of inmates and volunteer teams in medium-to-maximum security prisons.

Presenting the Monday, April 2, SBCC School of Extended Learning Mind & Supermind lecture, the couple will help attendees discover their own potential for transformation through selfless service.

From 7:30-9:30 p.m. at the SBCC Schott Auditorium, 10 W. Padre St, the experiential lecture How Selfless Service Can Transform You and the World will include a video on the power of this transformational work in the prisons.

The Pals will discuss how volunteers serving in traumatic circumstances can also care for themselves, allowing them to flourish in their work.

Through practical exercises informed by recent findings in neuroscience, attendees will begin to learn and practice service skills that have the potential to transform both their lives and the world around them.

They will also learn to incorporate these skills into their personal and work lives.

“Our natural capacity for caring and empathy for others, without good self-care practices, can lead to what’s known as ‘secondhand trauma’ and caregiver burnout,” said Dr. Paul.

“Many of us experienced this in the aftermath of the recent Montecito debris flows. We will discuss recent findings in neuroscience that inform self-care practices that volunteers in any service capacity can benefit from,” he said.

Through their volunteer work at The Freedom to Choose Project, the Pauls train volunteers to serve in prisons, working with inmates on practical life skills, such as communication, self-responsibility and emotional intelligence.

These volunteers often hear difficult stories but are able to restore themselves and avoid the all-too-common experience of volunteer burnout. There are typically waiting lists for their 80-90 person prison volunteer teams.

The Pauls have been leading prison programs for some 13 years and co-founded the nonprofit Freedom to Choose Project in Santa Barbara in 2010.

Admission to the talk is $20. For information, call 687-0812.

— Angel Pacheco for SBCC School of Extended Learning.