Fighting Injustice Standing Together

Problem: Women in prison receive dismal levels of attention, care, programs and services which make re-entry, and finding & obtaining sustainable jobs and livelihoods more difficult. 

Solution: In addition to women-friendly resources, we customize women-specific programs and services for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals. These programs include public speaking, theater, resume writing, goal-setting, interview prep, and job search workshops. We differentiate our services by taking a woman-first approach, and using women-led forums to tailor every level of service we provide. 

Scaling: Currently, we serve the Maryland Correctional Institute for Women. Before we introduced these services, they did not exist in MCIW. We began scaling our out-of-prison services by offering goal-setting, interview prep, job search and resume writing to anyone in the country through our online Listening & Support Hotline (the only hotline of its kind). Our women-specific methodology can be applied to more than one women's prison.

The most basic criminal justice reform model has 8 stages: 
Environment > Crime > Law Enforcement > Trial > Sentencing > Corrections > Re-entry >>> Recidivism

Fighting Injustice Standing Together injects itself into two stages of the larger criminal justice reform model: Corrections & Re-entry. 

These two areas are uniquely important because:

• women have harder times finding jobs then men after being released from prison;
• power dynamics make women more vulnerable inside a prison system;
• women of color (per capita) are disproportionately locked up; 
• women of color do not benefit from programs like "ban the box" because employers just assume the worst from black people; and,
• women of color are disproportionately impacted employment-wise during COVID-19 because they are returning to lower-income communities where more businesses are shutdown

These two stages are inextricably linked to reimagining pathways to employment. First, inside women's prisons, females do not receive the same amount of programs as men, and the services they receive are modeled after men's programs, which overlooks women's unique struggles and challenges. 

Secondly, out-of-prison, their support structures are depressing. They return to a society that neglects them and does not provide the mentors, leaders or connections a person needs to transform lives.

Fighting Injustice Standing Together delivers women-specific resources and programs inside and outside of prisons. The kinds of programs we facilitate are public speaking/poetry, theater, resume writing, job search, interview prep and goal-setting with professionals/mentors. We sponsored forums with formerly incarcerated women who took a women-first approach to creating our workshops based on lessons learned and experience. This includes starting out workshops with personal empowerment and individuality -exercises, -games and -stories, ensuring careful consideration for sensitivities and feedback, and using resources and tools that have been specifically tailored for women.

Prior to COVID-19, these services were delivered shoulder-to-shoulder with the women we serve. During COVID-19 we had to adjust to distance services only. Recently, we have launched our Listening and Support Hotline chat tool that formerly incarcerated individuals can connect with to obtain services and resources remotely. We have customized a process for women across the country to obtain our job-related services through this technology. No other online platform exists like our Listening and Support Hotline that serves formerly incarcerated women.

Our target population primarily focuses on incarcerated women who are planning to be released in the future and desire to have a job, and formerly incarcerated women who are already released and actively looking for a job. These are women who make up one of the most vulnerable populations in the United States, and who receive little to no job-related services to support them. 

The Fighting Injustice Standing Together workshops have been shown to increase women's confidence, empower their voices, elevate their pursuit of goals, and prepare them with life skills they have never received before. Our program also provides women with physical products they can take away, such as customized resumes (built shoulder-to-shoulder with professionals) and a list of jobs researched by our team. In some cases, our goal-setting sessions have led to direct job referrals and access to sustainable jobs and livelihoods. 

We have previously conducted surveys of our workshops with women who have been through our program, and also have partnered with George Washington University to allow graduate students to assess our program in the future (post COVID-19). We continually host forums and brainstorming workshops with formerly incarcerated women to gather their inputs on how to serve women more effectively. 

We provide a segment of the population that is drastically overlooked with knowledge and skills needed to access jobs and livelihoods in the economy. Businesses are demanding communication skills in the future. Our workshops enhance women's speaking skills with a focus on audience, context, intent, and clarity. Communication skills should not be overlooked as a dimension to consider because of the layers of job-discrimination women receive once released from prison (based on looks, accents, or background checks). Strategic and confident communications are pivotal. Future initiatives include business development and technology workshops such as Adobe, and Microsoft office classes.

We are a team of 2 full-time, 1 part-time, and ~5 volunteers.

Our organization is small, but diverse. It was started by Schai Schairer (myself) who is black, and my colleague Laura Tarantino, who is Latino and formerly incarcerated. Our board of directors is made up of white and minority women who are also mentors of ours. We value diversity very much because the women we help come from extremely diverse backgrounds. In our 1023 nonprofit documentation, we used the MIT Living Wage calculator to establish equitable rates. 

Our solution is adding a new dimension of performance by taking a women-centric approach to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women preparing, finding and obtaining jobs. Very few female prisons have job-related programs, and if they do, they are modeled after programs designed for men's prisons. By taking a woman-first approach, we elevate women's performance, knowledge, skills and preparedness for accessing jobs in the future.

We have been inside the Maryland Correctional Institute for Women for several years as a volunteer program, but just last year launched as a nonprofit (Fighting Injustice Standing Together). One of our first initiatives was to have a third party assessment of our program conducted by George Washington University. Unfortunately, right as we launched that assessment COVID-19 occurred. We do have preliminary survey results (all very positive) but the sample size is very small. 

However, the Warden of the Maryland Correctional Institute for Women is extremely supportive of our organization, and is also one of my mentors. She reports that women who partake in our programs have elevated positivity and improved attitudes. She has said they work hard to prepare every week for our class, and it encourages women to write, critically think, and work together on constructive activities. 

Furthermore, former participants of our program, and women who support our brainstorming workshops and forums all agree that the Fighting Injustice Standing Together methodology of elevating and caring for women is extremely valuable and effective.

Supporting the future of workers must include supporting women. We stand behind the following theory of change:

1. Women strive with women-focused solutions
2. Incarcerated women and society benefits from job-related and leadership programs inside prisons

Within 2021, we want to have served 200 women through 150 workshops/sessions, recruited 20 volunteers, partner with George Washington to launch an evaluation program, and obtain $175K in funding. We came close to winning our first round of major funds ($30K) by being a finalist in the Harvard Kennedy School Cheng Fellowship program, but we lost in the final round and the feedback we received was that they preferred founders/CEO submissions (the student who submitted was only a part-time Fighting Injustice Standing Together worker so they didn't fall into that category).

Our five year goal is to have raised enough funding to support operations inside the major female prisons on the east coast, and expand our out-of-prison services model.

Our impact measurements eventually will track how fast individuals were able to obtain a job, how well they are at keeping a job, where they are a year from now and fives years from now, and recidivism. However, right now we're focusing on confidence measurements, identity and empowerment scales, and job readiness/preparedness assessments.

We have raised funds from our network, and we are about to conduct our first real donor engagement roadshow in the DC area. However, we have not yet won our first large donation or set of funds to pay ourselves a living wage. We are sprinting full speed but having to worry about paying the rent while doing so. Our 1023 nonprofit documentation uses the MIT Living Wage calculator, but we have not scratched the surface of being able to pay ourselves that amount. 

We have been building a Washington DC donor engagement plan during COVID-19. We have identified 13 potential large donors in the Washington DC-Baltimore area that have a history of donating to criminal justice reform efforts. With our network, we were able to get introductions and referrals for 3 out of those 13, so we are going to focus on those 3 donors for the short term.

To help us articulate the effectiveness of our program, we are are in the process of editing 2 videos. 

• The first video is going to be a 3-minute edited video of a goal-setting session we set up between a lawyer in Baltimore and one of our returning citizen clients. I think this will demonstrate how valuable these sessions are to women.
• The second video is going to be a 3-minute edited video of our brainstorming forums that discusses women-specific challenges and solutions.

These videos will be ready in December before we start reaching out to donors.

I believe we can start collecting data on how fast individuals are obtaining a job, how well they are keeping that job, how they feel about the job, and where they are 1 year/5 years from now. I think that is very doable. Overall recidivism rates is something we would eventually like to collect, although the data doesn't always tell the whole story. You have to really look at the entire criminal justice reform model because so many factors influence recidivism. 

I, Schai Schairer, have always been passionate about criminal justice reform. After high school, I started working for a number of service organizations focused on inner city education and operations. I advocated for criminal justice reform by being an organizer of peaceful direct action protests. I eventually finished community college and obtained my undergraduate degree in criminal justice from Coppin University. I have been a volunteer inside prisons for many years, and started my own volunteer program in 2017. I have set up a very good network since, and in late 2019, started my own nonprofit with my co-founder, Laura Tarantino. 

Laura Tarantino was incarcerated soon after she finished high school. She obtained a couple felonies after falling in with the wrong crowd. Since her release in 2010, she's moved mountains. While finishing her associates degree at community college, she became intern of the month at the national nonprofit RAINN. She petitioned and obtained her civil rights from the State of Virginia.  She later interned at another nonprofit called Families Against Mandatory Minimums. She was interviewed by the Washington Post for criminal justice reform efforts she led. Then she finished her undergraduate degree at George Mason University with a 3.85 GPA, while being a teacher's assistant and presenting at the Virginia Association of Communication Arts and Sciences (VACAS). She continued working in nonprofits after graduation and eventually co-founded Fighting Injustice Standing Together with me. In 2019, she was pardoned by the Governor of Virginia for all her felonies. 

During COVID, we have partnered with a couple other great organizations such as Justice Arts Coalition, and Voices Unbarred to provide non-job related workshops through distance services. We would like to continue collaborating with them on some of our out-of-prison workshops too once COVID barriers recede.

Fighting Injustice Standing Together’s business model is providing life-changing services to women in and out of prison and broadcasting community impacts that resonate with large numbers of people interested in supporting the criminal justice community and women. 

Considering William Foster’s Ten Nonprofit Funding Models, Fighting Injustice Standing Together falls perfectly within the “heartfelt connector” model because our work resonates with people’s existing concerns and beliefs about what criminal justice reform must include. The Baltimore-Washington metro area also contains several dozens of individuals registered in the Giving Pledge. With improved marketing material, such as the two videos we discussed earlier, FIST must network, and conduct persistent outreach to “big betters” interested in criminal justice reform or women’s rights. Finally, FIST needs to establish a grant writing plan and routine for applying to public service provider contracts. 

We hope to raise $175K in 2021. 

Please note, our offerings & results are primarily driven by our staff performing direct services shoulder-to-shoulder with women, in small groups, and by coordinating volunteers (experts in their fields) to support operations such as goal-setting. While more than half of the funding goes to staff, this should not be looked at as traditional overhead expenses. In a small nonprofit, without a staff, these women-first services cannot be delivered. Our staff salary is equal between everyone, and based on the MIT Living Wage salary for nonprofit employees. 

In 2021 we hope to raise $150K for 2 full-time and 1 part-time staff (salary + benefits), and we estimate approximately $25K in operational costs that go primarily to serving women but also organizational expenses. This includes:

• Workshop support, and re-usable equipment & supplies (~150 sessions/workshops + workshop specific material + paying formerly incarcerated women to support our forums)
• Survival/care packages for returning citizens (~100 in 2021)
• Information technology (Listening & Support Hotline + training software +  support for COVID-19 remote operations environment) 
• Permits and organizational costs
• Communications & media (example: our brochures are made available for potential women seeking our services inside social worker offices, parole & probation offices)
• Legal
• Travel 

As we expand to more prisons, we will increase our operations costs, volunteer force, and paid staff appropriately.

** This response was generalized for public viewing. A more detailed breakout of our funding plans is available upon request **

There are so many women right now that go overlooked by society. With COVID-19, their pains, struggles and challenges have only increased. We know our program elevates these women, especially when it comes to being prepared to take on the world when they are released from prison, and find and keep a job. 

I know MIT may be looking for technical solutions, but I think methodology is also extremely important. With almost 300,000 women in prison, and more formerly incarcerated struggling on the outside, our societies approach to caring for these women is far below acceptable. 

Women have unique challenges and additional barriers they must overcome. Services that are preparing women for the future work force must consider this and adapt the methods we use to care and empower them.

I know our program can be scaled nationwide. We just have to get past our funding barrier right now.