Helping Women Continue Their Education After Prison

Helping Women Continue Their Education After Prison

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This is the VOA Special English Education Report

Some women's prisons in the United States offer classes for college credit. But when the prisoners are released, they may not have much chance to continue their education.

In two thousand, a woman named Barbara Martinsons started a program to help these former prisoners. She established the College and Community Fellowship.

Ms. Martinsons taught at Manhattan Marymount College in New York City. She has also taught college courses at a women's prison in New York state.

The College and Community Fellowship provides advice to former prisoners. It also helps them gain admission to college. That process can be very difficult for anyone, let alone a person with a prison record.

The group also provides financial aid to members attending college. Members of the College and Community Fellowship are called CCF Fellows.

Some have earned not only college degrees but master's degrees and a doctorate. Selina Fulford has already earned one master's degree and is working on her second.

She is now an adjunct professor at the College of New Rochelle in New York state. About seventy percent of those in the program work full time while studying.

Nationally, one-third of women who have been in prison are later sent back for committing other crimes or violating the terms of their release. By comparison, almost none of the CCF fellows have been sent back behind bars.

The Reverend Vivian Nixon, a minister, heads the College and Community Fellowship. She once spent time in prison for falsifying documents.

She says the group helps people reclaim the goals they had for their lives before going to jail. You don't have to just accept any job -- at a fast-food restaurant or cleaning up a hotel or cleaning up the streets, she says.

As she puts it, "You can still have desires and goals, and we are going to help you meet those desires and goals."About two hundred seventy people are in the program.

The group holds meetings where the women talk about subjects like personal finance and developing a career, and there is a social hour.

Vivian Nixon says society in general is happiest when the women do not go back to jail. But she says her greatest hope is that members of the fellowship members are setting high goals for themselves and their children.

We have more stories about education programs for people in or out of prison. You can find them, along with other reading and listening materials for learning English, at voaspecialenglish.com.

For VOA Special English, I'm Carolyn Presutti.