Courageous Convictions: Be Your Own Boss

Thank you so much for anyone who donated for our workshop! We are now asking for continuous support as we continue to build nontraditional, progressive reentry services that promote financial freedom and empowerment. Currently, we seek to provide additional coding workshops and to break into possible employment opportunities in the cannabis industry.

Check out our website at: www.courageousconvictions.com

If you or someone you know could benefit from our workshop, please sign up!

More Information on our Nonprofit:

Here at Courageous Convictions, it is our mission to help those who have been historically oppressed and overlooked to find empowerment. Specifically, we help individuals who were formerly incarcerated or have criminal convictions reintegrate into society by helping them find meaningful employment. We do this by putting on workshops that teach people how to be their own boss.

In Chicago, the prison population is primarily people of color. Not only is our prison system flawed, but so are our reentry procedures. Currently, if you were in prison, when you are released, you are released with little to no guidance from the state, the city, or anyone else. If you’re released from Cook County Jail, oftentimes you are let out without a phone call to your loved ones, a jacket to wear, or a ride to your home. This is both traumatic and shocking.

Where systemic racism is prevalent, it is up to us to tear down the old systems that no longer work, and reinvent new ones that are better for each, and every one of our communities. It’s time to help your neighbor, and the best way that you can help someone who has been recently released is to help them find stable, meaningful employment.

Statistically, the numbers show that if someone who has been released from prison does not find secure employment within three years, they have a 97% chance of recidivating/ going back to prison. As the system sits now, we are setting up those who are released from jail, for failure. When you have a felony, you are barred from a lot of state welfare programs – sometimes this includes healthcare, SNAP/Link, and housing. Additionally, it can be extremely difficult for someone with a felony to receive financial aid, or other types of loans/credit. Not to mention the difficulties surrounding getting and keeping employment. We are essentially pushing people with convictions to either reoffend, or be homeless.

When our founder worked at the Cook County Public Defender’s as a 711 extern during law school, her clients were primarily black or hispanic. In the year and a half that she was there, she handled four white clients – all of which were in for either drug possession or sex crimes. On the other hand, she saw hundreds of people both black and hispanic being charged with everything from A to Z. It was NOT unusual for her clients to be INNOCENT, oftentimes being targeted because they already had a background, or because of where they lived or who they knew. Sometimes (a lot of the time), her clients took plea deals for short sentences for time they’d already served while awaiting trial, in the hopes that they would be released earlier and would not have to go through the additional trauma of continuing to be in jail. Our founder saw, very clearly, that our system was broken.

With these workshops, we hope to create systemic change and promote racial equity.

We need YOUR help in donating to make these workshops happen! 

Anything helps, and thank you for your generosity!