Wash U Prison Education Project Reentry Capacity VISTA - FT

The Program Capacity VISTA member will increase the capacity of the Prison Education Project’s (PEP) academic and reentry support team by developing new programming tools for current PEP students and alumni and increasing the capacity of existing services. These measures will ensure the sustainability of PEP’s reentry programming, which works to reduce barriers to employment, promote financial stability, and find and maintain stable housing. These are areas of pressing need, given that formerly incarcerated individuals suffer disproportionately from unemployment, homelessness, and poverty. Successful reentry has the potential to be a meaningful anti-poverty measure, since poverty is not only a predictive factor in incarceration, but incarceration also generates and perpetuates poverty.

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This VISTA project will support and expand the Prison Education Project’s current anti-poverty work in the St. Louis area. Offering both an Associate’s and Bachelor’s Degree to incarcerated students at the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center in Pacific, MO and the Women’s Eastern Reception, Diagnostic, and Correctional Center in Vandalia, MO, PEP provides incarcerated Missourians with a powerful job credential that improves employment outcomes and reduces the poverty-producing effects of incarceration. While delivering a college education is the core of our mission, PEP’s work is by no means limited to the classroom. Employing a four-person core reentry team, supported by numerous community members, interns, and volunteers, PEP provides reentry services to enrolled students beginning one year before release, and continuing indefinitely following release.