“… with the help of [BLWL] buying the textbooks I needed, I was able to continue pursuing my AA.” – Patty C.

​Help us reach Building Lives With Learning’s  goal of raising $30,000.00 in 2018.  This amount will enable us to continue and expand funding educational pursuits for the women at the California Institute for Women (CIW), including offering  the opportunity to begin exploring Bachelor and Master’s studies.

​To date BLWL has spent $3500 on textbooks, tuition, and scholarships through first quarter of 2018.  We have assisted over 27 women in pursuing their goals of higher education, and the textbooks we have donated continue to benefit additional students each semester.

​Building Lives With Learning tracks each sponsored person’s course completion and the grade that they receive.  A “C” average must be maintained in order to receive further scholarships.

Books that are purchased are reused for the next semester  allowing a donated book to help more that one incarcerated person , which allows Building Lives With Learning funds to be used effectively.

We will know we are making progress as each college semester passes and number of incarcerated student inmates increases leading to obtaining their college degrees.

 

We have team members and volunteers in place to vet both student applications and preferred courses, procure applicable materials and manage fund raising efforts. We’ve experienced a slow yet steady growth as we have moved into our third year. We look to expand our efforts further was two of our board members become more available toward the end of 2018.

We are setting our sights on various areas to extend our philanthropic efforts, they include:

~    ​Launching the program at Folsom Women’s Facility (2019)

~    Launching the program at California Correctional Women’s Facility (2020)

~    Offering scholarship opportunities to the children of incarcerated women.  We want to help support and encourage the families that are at home separated from their mothers.  This scholarship will help to cover some of the costs of the school year.  The criteria for receiving this scholarship is still being finalized, more on this later. (2019)

Building Lives With Learning’s goal is to bridge the gap for incarcerated women by giving them the opportunity to achieve higher education or a marketable trade in a effort to break the cycle of incarceration by returning them to their families and community as productive members of society.