We CU Community Partner Spotlight: Education Justice Project

10/24/2022 2:24:31 PM

We CU and the School of Social Work’s Community Learning Lab partner with approximately one hundred community organizations each year. Here, one of our partners answers three questions about their organizations’ missions and community impact.   

Today’s feature is Education Justice Project. EJP is a vibrant community of incarcerated students, educators, formerly incarcerated individuals, and others who are committed to a more just and humane world. They believe that providing quality post-secondary education within prisons is an important step towards that vision.

Education Justice Project Director Rebecca Ginsburg and three EJP alumni, Spankey Davis, Cragg Hardaway, and Emmett Sanders, recently joined We CU Co-Director Emily Stone for a video release and panel discussion about EJP's work and the incredible impact that both the program AND its alumni have on our society. You can watch a 2-minute video or check out the full discussion on YouTube

You can also follow EJP on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter 

Lee Ragsdale (she/her) serves as director of the Reentry Guide Initiative. Lee discusses how EJP makes a positive impact in the community, expanding our definition of community, and the importance of centering the humanity and rights of formerly incarcerated people.  

If you would like We CU to feature your organization in this series, contact the Community Learning Lab at SSW-CLL@mx.uillinois.edu.    

 

What does a positive community impact look like in this organization? 

We know we’re being effective when incarcerated individuals from prisons across Illinois seek to transfer to Danville Correctional Center so they can enroll in EJP; when we receive more applications than we can accept from Illinois students, faculty, and staff to participate in EJP programming so that they can engage the important issues around incarceration and reentry that EJP addresses; and when universities from across the US seek our guidance when starting programs of their own. 

With respect to our Reentry Guide Initiative, which connects incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people with the resources they need for a healthy transition to life after prison, we can see we’re having a positive community impact through the requests we receive for our reentry guides. Each year people in prison, family members, and social service agencies ask for thousands of guides–more than we can currently provide–actually. We would love to have more members and more support so we can better meet the enormous need! 

  

What advice do you have for University of Illinois students who are interested in getting involved in the community?   

First, I’d ask students to expand their definition of community to include those who are incarcerated. Danville Correctional Prison is just 45 minutes from the U of I campus and there are people from all over the state incarcerated there including Chicago and Champaign-Urbana. 

EJP invites students to get involved in on-campus, virtually and through activities at the prison. This can include coming to EJP’s campus office to respond to written requests to our reentry guides and serving as an intern for other EJP programs. 

 

What do you wish more people knew about the populations you serve? 

I’d like more people to intentionally center the humanity and rights of formerly incarcerated people. In our society, one of the last groups that it’s considered socially acceptable to discriminate against are people who have come out of prison, especially those with felony convictions. People with records live with permanent punishments. In many states they can’t vote, they are excluded from housing and job opportunities. The list goes on. We address this, first, by discouraging the incarceration of people to begin with, thus avoiding this stigma, as well as chipping away at the policies, practices and mindsets that keep people with criminal records marginalized.