Twenty summers ago, Victor Hassine, an inmate serving a life sentence at Western Penitentiary, met Adrienne Young, an NAACP organizer and evangelist who told him and other prisoners to hold on to hope.

"If you can't be free in here, you won't be free out there," preached Young, whose encouragement changed Hassine's life.

Instead of retreating into a black hole of depression, he went on to write "Life Without Parole," which chronicles the hell of incarceration -- drugs, overcrowding, rape, AIDS -- and is now in its fourth printing.

Pennsylvania law prohibits an inmate from profiting from his crime. So when Hassine's book became successful, he donated earnings to a Philadelphia group aiding families of murdered children.

He is now poised to do the same for Young, who runs Tree of Hope, a Pittsburgh social service agency that helps families victimized by violence.

The gift could change the lives of those Young is trying to aid.

A few weeks ago, Hassine gave nearly $4,000 to Tree of Hope, specifically to Young's latest initiative, "Operation Safe Summer," which hopes to send 500 children to wilderness camps this summer.

About 200 of the children will come from the North Side, where gun violence has made it one of the deadliest areas of the city. So far this year, seven of Pittsburgh's 15 homicides took place there. Other campers will come from the city's East End neighborhoods.

Young lost her son, a Carnegie Mellon University art student, to gun violence at Christmas time in 1994. His death sparked the launch of her faith-based group.

"In the summer, violence, poverty and closed swimming pools become a recipe for disaster. We want our kids off the street. We want our kids in a safe place," she said.

In addition to Hassine's gift, Tree of Hope has drawn $50,000 from a donor who wants to remain anonymous, and money from NAACP groups at other state prisons.

The plan is to send children ages 9 to 17 to Christian camps, Pine Springs in Somerset and one run by The Salvation Army, for two weeks at a time.

When Hassine first searched the Internet for a smaller organization to help, he discovered Tree of Hope, at www.treeofhope.com, and was impressed with its mission.

At the time, he didn't know his friend was the executive director.

"Now I really feel like the goodwill has come full circle. It was two decades ago when Adrienne inspired me to do something like this," he said.

Life in prison has given Hassine insight to lost people and he believes going to camp will give the children a first chance at a different life.

When violence flares from youth, he said, "we call it a crime wave, but it's really a bunch of people screaming out to be attached and they don't know how."

It's sort of what happens with the mayhem in prison, he said, "where being kind is a weakness and viciousness and recklessness are to be respected and admired."

In 1981, Hassine, a law school graduate, was convicted of hiring a hit man who then killed the wrong man in Bucks County. Hassine was sentenced to life. Now at the state prison in Somerset, he served part of his sentence at Western Penitentiary, which is where he met Young.

Hassine's family moved from Egypt to New Jersey in 1961. He said he was able to go to summer camp through local boys' clubs.

"I know what it's like to have support," said Hassine, now 50. "To not have it breeds anger and hatred."

"But we're all interconnected and it's important to have family and community support," he said on the phone from Somerset.

Since being imprisoned, one of Hassine's aims has been keeping young people out of the system. He has participated in "Scared Straight," a project exposing delinquents to the harshness of prison life to deter them from crime.

He once compared the rising numbers of blacks being imprisoned to a "slave ship of young black faces" and told Young it breaks his heart and that he wanted to do something about it.

Hassine has decided that more of the profits from his book will go to assist Tree of Hope, thinking the summer camp is a good way to keep children out of the system, and a good bargain to boot.

"If you think prison is too expensive, where you pay $30,000 to $50,000 for each prisoner," he said, "you must make the contribution now."