Partnering with FREEAMERICA and New Profit to support the work of entrepreneurs impacted by the criminal justice system

At Bank of America, we work with nonprofit organizations to help provide meaningful employment opportunities for entrepreneurs impacted by the criminal justice system regardless of gender, race, criminal record or disability.

We're proud to partner with singer, songwriter, and activist John Legend's organization, FREEAMERICA, and New Profit to promote Unlocked Futures, an accelerator supporting entrepreneurs impacted by the criminal justice system who are operating mission-driven organizations. By lending support to individual entrepreneurs impacted by the criminal justice system, Unlocked Futures aspires to have a wide systemic impact. Through their ventures, the entrepreneurs themselves are actively breaking down barriers for their contemporaries and for future generations. We hope to scale and deepen the impact of the accelerator by amplifying the contributions made by the members of the cohort and eliminating the stigma around the formerly incarcerated.

This partnership, and others we support, gives individuals a grant, tools, mentorship, and strategic support to help grow their business.

See the impact Unlocked Futures is making nationwide:

Will Avila, Clean Decisions (Washington, DC)

Clean Decisions employs returning citizens (ex-offenders) in a commercial cleaning service and leads Changing Perceptions, a nonprofit helping individuals coming out of incarceration to develop an ownership mentality - in their future, their community, and ultimately as an entrepreneur.

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If I can impact one person to not make a bad decision, that's what I want to do.

[somber music]

I started Clean Decisions as a for-profit commercial kitchen-cleaning company. When I was young, my mom left us at a McDonald's. My dad became a vicious alcoholic. One of my older brothers joined the gangs right after my mom left. I chose the same path he chose, the gangs.

In prison, there's two choices you’re gonna make. You're gonna go to the yard, you're gonna get tatted up or you can go to the library. I wanted an opportunity to change. I started going to the library, I started reading more books about business and how to be successful. How to change your way of thinking. When I first got out, I went to apply for job, after job. I got rejected, I couldn't get it.

All the stuff that I’d been through. All the stuff that sometimes made me cry, made me just put my head down and made me just say, "You know what? I quit." That made me stronger. And that made me take that next step forward.

Clean Decisions hires ”returning citizens,” people coming out of incarceration. We give you a job, we give you a mentor, and we also give you a community. 43 jobs have been created because of that message of hope. Being able to help them in a way that has changed their thinking is just a happy sight. It makes me proud to say I'm a father to my son.

[hopeful music]

A book is opening. Write some chapters in it.

Clean Decisions hires ”returning citizens,” people coming out of incarceration. We give you a job, we give you a mentor, and we also give you a community. 43 jobs have been created because of that message of hope. Being able to help them in a way that has changed their thinking is just a happy sight. It makes me proud to say I'm a father to my son.

[hopeful music]

A book is opening. Write some chapters in it.

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Amanda Alexander, Detroit Justice Center (Detroit)

Detroit Justice Center builds equitable cities and remedies the impacts of incarceration in the U.S. by delivering community lawyering services, economic opportunities, and other ‘Just City’ solutions.

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One in nine black kids has an incarcerated parent. I am the founder of the Detroit Justice Center. The aim is to provide direct civil legal services to make sure that families that have criminal justice involvement are not shut out. Growing up, I was always a daddy's girl. He was just the center of my world. Around six years old, my dad ended up being incarcerated for two years. In places like Detroit, it feels like half of the kids are impacted by incarceration. A family could be broken up over parking violations that became a missed court date, that became a warrant, that became incarceration. Being aware of that, then wanting to figure out what I could do to change that.

[gentle music]

The Detroit Justice Center will open its doors in 2018. The aim is to provide a place to go to get records cleared, warrants cleared, drivers licenses reinstated, fines and fees addressed. Instead of a school-to-prison pipeline, how do we set up prison-to-higher-education or prison-to-job pipelines? The center will have a just city innovation lab centering the needs of people who are coming back from prison. I hope that the legacy of the center is to dream big about the world beyond prisons where people have everything they need.

[music]

Topeka Sam, The Ladies of Hope Ministries (New York City)

Ladies of Hope Ministries helps disenfranchised and marginalized women transition from incarceration back into society through education, empowerment, spiritual development, and housing.

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I believe that every woman in this country deserves safe housing. My organization is called The Ladies of Hope Ministries. The mission is to help women who are transitioning back through education, spiritual empowerment, entrepreneurship, and advocacy. Getting into Baltimore, going out and kind of venturing off of campus and dating guys from Baltimore City who were really heavily engaged in the drug trade, I ended up selling drugs myself. I always just thought that people took drugs because they wanted to. That's how I looked at it. It wasn't until I went to prison, I actually asked the women, "Why did you take drugs?" They started really telling me about their experiences. Everything was based on some type of trauma or violence that was inflicted upon them, and their way of coping. I contributed to the harm of communities and specifically, women. I would like Hope House to be known as a place where women can become whole again. The safe housing space that gave every woman and girl an opportunity to rebuild their lives that otherwise, would not have been able to. Once I was able to see all of the nastiness that was inside and was really able to clean myself, it allowed me to see myself for who I was and who I was created to be. Being able to provide that same hope and opportunity for healing and focus to another woman is everything.

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Marcus Bullock, Flikshop (Washington, DC)

Flikshop provides inmates the ability to receive mail from a mobile app every single day from their loved ones.

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A post card ends mass incarceration because it allows you to keep the connection going. My technology, Flikshop, allows users to connect back with their families in prison anywhere in the country. Probably about thirteen, fourteen years old I started selling drugs. I went from selling blow pops in school to saying, "Hey, wait a minute. This will allow me to be able to drive a Mercedes?" That sentenced me to serve eight years in prison, when I was fifteen years old. In those moments of despair, my mom would not let my hand go. She would write me these long letters and send me pictures of my nieces and nephews growing up. It would break that exterior, and she chipped away at it. She sent me pictures of my bedroom. "This is where you're gonna be living when you come home." That connection saved my life. If a piece of paper with some ink on it could do that for me, imagine what photos every day could do for people in there.

[gentle music]

Flikshop is a mobile application that allows you to take a photo add some quick text press send, and for 99¢, we print it on a real, tangible postcard and mail it to any person in any jail, prison, or immigration facility. When you become exposed to what the possibilities are outside of the neighborhoods that you come from then you aspire to be more. Maybe I can help reshape what that looks like.

[gentle music]

Flikshop is a mobile application that allows you to take a photo add some quick text press send, and for 99¢, we print it on a real, tangible postcard and mail it to any person in any jail, prison, or immigration facility. When you become exposed to what the possibilities are outside of the neighborhoods that you come from then you aspire to be more. Maybe I can help reshape what that looks like.

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Teresa Hodge, Mission: Launch (Washington, DC)

Mission: Launch, Inc. introduces technology and entrepreneurship to formerly incarcerated individuals as a way of ensuring self-sufficiency; manages the Rebuilding Re-Entry Coalition, a citizen-led movement committed to creating a more just and inclusive society for returning citizens.

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Jason Cleaveland, Obodo (St. Louis)

Obodo helps direct service nonprofits, especially those dealing with homelessness, addiction, and re-entry - through a technology platform - to streamline their data, outcome, and training systems.

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Becoming data-driven is really about empowering organizations to make decisions based on data rather than emotion. The company that I founded is called Obodo. We work with small human service nonprofits to help them leverage technology to become data-driven. I'm a survivor of childhood sexual trauma. Which really painted my young adulthood with a different brush. It really led me to alcoholism and addiction because I didn't have a language to deal with the trauma. I got three Driving-While-Intoxicated’s within nine months. In Missouri, that's a class D felony, punishable by ten years in prison. The night that I got my third DWI, I had a one-car accident with a ditch. I was covered in blood head to toe, and I saw myself in the mirror. And I saw my face. My teeth had gone through my lips, I had a couple cuts on my head. I felt like my outsides finally matched my insides. Going into the county jail, it was either die, or change. Obodo has evolved to this data-driven, hodgepodge of softwares, all under one roof. "Data-driven" is a term used to denote the way that we make decisions. Most small human service nonprofits, they're making decisions based on what we think might work, without collecting the data. These are the people on the front lines of re-entry, homelessness, domestic violence. These organizations are the most in need of leverage. Becoming data-driven means that they have the ability to raise more money, to impact more people, and to empower more communities. It's not going to be the huge organizations that change this thing. It's going to be the three people sitting in a church basement that have come together to help in their community. I want to empower those people.

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James Monteiro, Re-Entry Campus Program (Providence)

Re-Entry Campus Program works within and outside the Adult Correction Institution of Rhode Island to ensure that adults in transition homes have a college degree pathway that is integrated into their post-release support systems.

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It's easy to be locked up in prison. It's harder to be locked out of society. I started ReEntry Campus to help individuals who are currently and formerly incarcerated finish bachelor's degrees that they started behind the prison walls. I dropped out of school in the eighth grade. I spent the next 20 years of my life in and out of prison. I would get out, and then, nothing to stand on, right back in. So the last time I was incarcerated, I was like, "How am I gonna stay out of here?" I had to come home prepared to make it happen. I registered for a college program as if I was outside on the street, but you had to go online and enter the answers. I would call my girl up on the phone. "Go online, log in. Answer to #1 is B…" And I'd tell her the answers. That's how I took my exams, [laughing] that's how I got my associate's degree. 67% of the people that came out of prison wanted more access to education. Only 27% were able to. At ReEntry Campus, we make it so it's affordable. When you're talking about a bachelor's degree, the cost jumps significantly. Education is proven to reduce recidivism. More education equals more money equals more freedom. When I was there, nobody was taking college courses. But now, everybody is taking college courses. You start something behind the walls, but you don't finish. A lot of it is due to cost. My goal is to help people to finish. I didn't know I could do this. I've wasted half my life. I wasted fifteen thousand days. [chuckles] If I'm lucky, I might have fifteen thousand left to do something. That's my blessing.

[inspiring music]

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Dirk Van Velzen, Prison Scholar Fund (Seattle)

Prison Scholars Fund keeps formerly incarcerated individuals from re-entering prison by creating educational opportunities for success in their communities and life.

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Every dollar invested in correctional education returns $19.76 back to society. Our program, the Prison Scholar Fund, we open access to education for incarcerated students. I was incarcerated from 1999 to 2015 for a series of commercial burglaries. In the first couple years of prison, I was figuring out how to commit my crimes better. Maybe just not get caught next time. Your head has to be in the right position for you to want to change. The opportunity of education opened up to me. It’s a really weird change when education catches hold of you. It just changed everything I wanted to do. Imagine the shock, after fifteen years in prison, you find yourself at Stanford. That's the power of education. From prison, I learned how to write grants. So I raised about $60,000 from behind prison walls and supported 110 students. I founded the Prison Scholar Fund in 2006. We provided paper-based courses that inmates can do through the mail. So we're unlocking this potential to help these people go to school. When you educate a person, they develop skills, they think differently, and they get out and get a job. They contribute back to society, they don't commit crimes, they support their family, their loved ones. Who do we want to live in our community, and who do we want in our nation? After being in prison for fifteen years, your brothers and sisters are there, they're hustlers, but just redirect that hustle. They can start a business, they can do really well they just need to apply that talent to the appropriate endeavor and just watch what happens.

[tranquil music]

10/15/18

Partnering with FREEAMERICA and New Profit to support the work of entrepreneurs impacted by the criminal justice system

Will Avila, Clean Decisions (Washington, DC)

Amanda Alexander, Detroit Justice Center (Detroit)

Topeka Sam, The Ladies of Hope Ministries (New York City)

Marcus Bullock, Flikshop (Washington, DC)

Teresa Hodge, Mission: Launch (Washington, DC)

Jason Cleaveland, Obodo (St. Louis)

James Monteiro, Re-Entry Campus Program (Providence)

Dirk Van Velzen, Prison Scholar Fund (Seattle)

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