Exchange for Change

Our program tackles one of the most urgent issues of our time, criminal justice reform. Pre pandemic, Exchange for Change was teaching more than 30 courses to hundreds of students in South Florida prisons; loss of funding and access to our students forced us to rethink how to elevate opportunities for those traditionally left behind. The Prize would allow us to complement our curriculum through alternate platforms - virtual as well as modular. We would create curriculums that could be taught statewide, including special courses for the most marginalized of the marginalized: transgender people, the disabled, and the elderly. We would also create a comprehensive evaluation component to be more effective and efficient with our limited resources. In E4C’s first six years, we reached over 1500 students, but there are more than 90,000 locked up in our state prisons and hundreds of juveniles housed in residential centers. We want to be the bridge that can elevate opportunities for, and foster understanding of and between people on both sides of the fence. Our program aims to change attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors through our courses and outreach, creating a healthier community that can inspire others to act as engines for social good.

I grew up in Cleveland, but really “grew up” – into myself and understanding the opportunities I could leverage for social justice from my privileged and educated background – in Haiti, where I lived for 15 of the 30 years I worked as a journalist. In 2009, I offered to teach a writing course to Haitian women in a South Florida prison. When not enough Haitian women enrolled, I opened the class to the compound, where I began my second educational “growth-spurt,” of understanding the negative impact of mass incarceration. My teaching was interrupted by Haiti’s 2010 earthquake; I returned for three more years. Back in Miami, profoundly changed by all I’d witnessed, it was as if nothing had changed for my incarcerated students, they were still silenced, much like the people of Haiti. I no longer wanted to report on what people said but rather create channels for them to speak - a drive which fueled the creation of Exchange for Change. It's in prison that I have had my “third growth spurt,” furthering my commitment to include incarcerated voices in the fight against the inequities of our justice system, and the need for systemic criminal justice reform nationwide.

Mass incarceration is one of the most urgent issues of our time. This is especially true in the country with the highest incarceration rates worldwide  and the state which incarcerates a higher percentage of its people than many wealthy democracies do - a state that has all but eliminated educational opportunities for those they've locked up.  

Incarceration has become our society’s response to poverty, substance abuse, and inadequate health care. Florida has the third largest incarcerated population nationwide (118,000 in state and federal prison) and some of the harshest sentencing laws in the country.  30,000 people return to the community annually; sadly, one out of every three incarcerated persons returns to prison after three years. 

At E4C we address two critical components of mass incarceration: a need for literacy/arts programming in prisons and a lack of public understanding of whom the incarcerated are. 

Our literacy and arts programming in prisons address the consequences of the school-to-prison pipeline, and provides an example of the systemic change possible within the prison/criminal justice systems. Our publications humanize voices otherwise silenced. This work improves the quality of life of those incarcerated and promotes healthy dialogue and changes in the perception/inclusion of justice-impacted people.

The system of mass incarceration operates through punishment and isolation. It restricts, silences, and flattens incarcerated people to society. Our work disrupts this - we provide opportunity, build community, and share the voices of the incarcerated with the outside world. We provide access to education/arts inside a system that has, nationally, restricted these programs. 

E4C knows of no other regional organization providing our array of services. We stand alone as a third-party non-profit partner with six higher education institutions and a juvenile center, providing a range of writing courses and exchanges online and in person.

We believe change is possible. We work towards it in partnerships: we co-founded the Florida Coalition for Higher Education in Prison and participe in the Southern Collective of Higher Education in Prison and the National Alliance for Higher Education in Prison.

By working directly with incarcerated individuals and amplifying their voices, we seek to assert their human rights and remind them, and the world, that we are all more than any harm we have caused.

We amplify the voice of incarcerated students through our literary journal, co-host the Prison Poet Laureateship, and are publishing an anthology from incarcerated writers nationwide documenting their pandemic experience.

We believe that education is a human right regardless of one’s environment. Our work elevates solutions to the impact of the school-to-prison pipeline, mass incarceration, and lack of educational options for incarcerated people; we provide solutions, build awareness and drive action to solve some of the most difficult and compounding problems of our world.

We specifically design courses to help returning citizens successfully re-enter their community with enhanced communication/life skills. In the classroom rival gang members, transgender people, elders, and those with disabilities  come together around writing; that unity spills out into the compound, improving the quality of life for everyone inside, staff included. 

The ultimate impact of our work is in dismantling systems of harm and providing opportunities for success for justice-impacted people. Relationships and stories are powerful levers in our work, and help us build community, awareness, and understanding. Our success is in the experience of a student finding his literary voice for the first time; in the outside student volunteer who changes his/her major to better serve their community; and in the power of our students to impact the public, garnering new allies that will take action on a local/national scale on issues of criminal justice reform.