All over America, jails cells are crashing shut as classroom doors are swinging closed. Eager inmates and students are doing their time to eventually obtain their goal – getting out and getting a job. Yet too often is the case that former inmates lose their motivation and opportunity to pursue an education that will get them a good job. However, just as an education doesn’t exclude someone from going to prison (Madoff has 150 years to fully comprehend that), so shouldn’t a prison sentence exclude someone from getting an education. The College and Community Fellowship (CCF) is making sure that temporary jail sentences don’t turn into lifetime blocks for people who want an education.

CCF is a program run through the City University of New York that helps formerly incarcerated women get college degrees. 283 women have admitted themselves into the service of the CCF, each of them taking the first steps in uncaging their potential. So far, 141 college degrees have been earned by women who are banking on their futures by investing in, and not withdrawing from, their educations.

This method of self-investment seems to be working. In New York, 44% of inmates are eventually sent back to prison within three years, while CCF participants have had only a 2% recidivist rate. This program is the brainchild of Barbara Martinsons, a business woman who used to teach at a corrections facility. As a teacher, Barbara distressed over the wave of wasted potential washing away from her jailed students. In instructing them, she found that they were the ones giving her a lesson, building new wings and extensions of compassion within her mental framework. As Kierkegaard put it, “to be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner. Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learner.” And so the instruction began, with the educational conviction of these convicted women pushing Ms. Martinsons to develop a program to aid them upon release.

She started the program up with her own money due to budget cuts, yet she still had faith that the investment was a good one. She was not disappointed. Almost immediately the program was getting a flood of phone calls from interested candidates. As Vivian Nixon, a former CCF student, noted, “I knew education was the key to changing my life in ways that would be permanent, so that I never ended up back in prison.” Seems like this was a popular sentiment among the newly released. According to the New York Daily News, “CCF recruits in prisons and through social service organizations. Contributions come from supporters that include David Rockefeller, The Robin Hood Foundation, Helena Rubinstein Foundation, New York Women’s Foundation and the Union Square Awards – CCF is a 2008 Union Square award winner. CCF offers recently released women everything from help filling out financial aid and college applications to getting them tutors and help with homework.”

The fact is, when a person breaks the law, there is no doubt that they should go to prison to pay their debt to society. Prison can be nightmare on your self-esteem and spirit. However, once you wake from that nightmare and are free to step back into the world, will you have the courage to keep dreaming? If you do, CCF will provide you the guidance and teaching support to make those dreams into a reality. Don’t make your time in prison a life sentence.