After Orange: Halfway Home
AFTER ORANGE: HALFWAY HOME
Help women who want to change their lives after being released from the correctional system.
WHO WE ARE
My name is Cassandra Hein and my sister Jamie has been incarcerated in Nevada for the past 10 years. During this time, we've noticed a severe deficiency in effective after-care for women being released. This program was designed by me and my sister to create a platform that sets women up for success. Our goal is to prevent them from re-offending and falling back into criminal lifestyles. 100% of the money you donate goes to keeping our home and program fully operating.
PURPOSE & METHODS
Our purpose is to help women get on their feet and become independent after leaving the correctional system. We provide a safe, structured, and sober living environment with the purpose of helping women transform into the best possible versions of themselves. Our program includes, but is not limited to, the following: 
Our life-planning tools help women structure their lives and implement steps to achieve short and long-term goals. In many cases, people previously involved in criminal lifestyles struggle with finishing what they start and taking direction. Here at After Orange, our program depends on accountability between peers. This provides a platform for each woman to become self-sufficient.
WHY THIS MATTERS
In the state of Nevada, 3,533 people were granted parole during FY 2016. 504 of these people were women. Despite these numbers, just a small handful of licensed Transitional Living Facilities (TLFs) exist in the Las Vegas area. Only one of these facilities is actively serving women at this time (12 beds total). To make matters worse, this single facility only accepts residents from the Federal Bureau of Prisons (which were not included in the numbers above). Due to the severe lack of resources, over 400 people technically on parole are still sitting behind bars at the taxpayers’ expense. Why? Because they don’t have suitable homes to parole to.
WHAT WE ARE DOING
For the past several months, we’ve been maneuvering the convoluted process of obtaining a state license. We’ve quickly realized why so few licensed TLFs exist: because the process is designed to fail from the start. The manner in which the legal requirements are arranged makes them logistically and financially unmeetable in most cases. Thanks to the generous donations we’ve received so far, we’ve made some progress while exposing many flaws along the way. In doing this, we hope to gain so much more than a state license for ourselves. We hope to contribute to changing the process and making the license obtainable for others.
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
Last month, Vanessa Murphy from CBS - Action News 8 came to our home to do a story about this issue. The story caught the state’s attention and they immediately took action. They are now working with us to help us get a temporary license in place. This will buy us the time to raise funds and meet the many legal requirements.
While this is a great step forward, the battle is far from over. All but two of our residents were required to leave until the temporary license is in place (which could take over month). This has dramatically reduced the income we depend on to keep our home running. The next month will be extra difficult for us, but our long-term future is looking much brighter.
THANK YOU!
All of the women in our home sincerely appreciate your support and donations. Check out our website for more information - After Orange: Halfway Home.
Stay tuned!
