The Challenge of Dreaming Big, Even When Times Are Hard
This last year has been bleak for most non-profit organizations, but as we look towards a new and better year, we have resolved to re-commit ourselves to the dreams we have deferred – among these the long-awaited Program Evaluation and the Learning Differences Program.
The Evaluation will track the long- and short-term impact of
participation in the College Program on students – not only
in terms of rates of recidivism, but further educational attainment,
employment, mental health, recovery from addiction,
and the wellbeing of family members. The Learning Differences
Program will address the needs of students who face
special challenges, whether classic learning disabilities such
as dyslexia or ADHD, English as a second language, or emotional
issues like extreme anxiety. All are common within our
student body.
Beyond these two projects, we hope in the coming year to hire a part-time development director, and to launch “Facing Sentencing,” a multi-media public education project that will combine photographic portraits, autobiographical essays, interviews, policy facts, and research, to inform people about sentencing in California and to link all that information with the faces and individual stories of people who’ve been impacted by those laws.
We also still hold out hope for the creation of additional classroom
space at San Quentin, most likely through the renovation
of existing space. We do not anticipate that CDCR will be
in a position to dedicate resources to this any time soon, but
such a project would clearly be feasible with private support.
Finally, we think constantly about when we might be in a position to develop new college programs at other prisons. This has always been a long-term goal, but it seems even more pressing now that we have former students sending us firsthand accounts of the dire need for education programs at other prisons around the state – another important reminder of how much more vividly a crisis grips us when we know the messenger personally.
