Women's Recovery & Reentry App

In Pennsylvania, we have seen a 288% increase in the number of people incarcerated from 1983 (21,968) to 2015 (85,179) (US Bureau of Justice Statistics and VERA Institute of Justice).  For women, the change has been amplified with a 1,023% increase from 1980 to 2015 in jails and 966% in prisons.  Between jail and prison, in 2015, Pennsylvania had 7,546 women in the carceral system.  The majority of those women are from Philadelphia and many return to the community after serving their time with major needs that are essential to their survival.  We look at these needs in 5 areas known as the Social Determinants of Health:  economic stability, education access and quality, health care access and quality, neighborhood and built environment, social and community context.  These represent peoples' most vital needs and, for someone who is just getting out of prison, meeting these needs quickly is integral to their ability to remain outside of the carceral system and not get locked up again.  It used to be that there were people to help with discharge planning for returning citizens - case managers that would help them find a place to live, connect to healthcare, address food insecurity, reunite with their families, etc.  Now, with staffing challenges and budget shortfalls, discharge planning has fallen by the wayside.  Our women are returning to the community with no plan which means many are homeless, without a way to connect to healthcare, functional illiteracy, no job, etc.  The most pressing need that we see is women who are coming out of jail/prison on medication-assisted treatment for substance use disorder or mental health medications who need to get hooked up with healthcare immediately to continue their therapeutic dose.  Without these resources immediately available to them and easily accessible, our women will miss doses, go back to using drugs, and not receive the mental health stability they experienced with therapeutic doses of their medications.  The numbers we see in Pennsylvania are just a portion of what is seen throughout the country.  This, unfortunately, is not an issue that is going away.  It is only going to get bigger.

In 2020, Why Not Prosper created an app for women coming out of incarceration to help them with reentry.  It was during the COVID-19 pandemic and women were being released from prison without any notice or plan.  We needed a way to help women connect to resources to meet their most basic needs so they would not re-offend and return to jail/prison.  We hired an app developer to create the app to our specifications and our SWAG (Sisters With A Goal - our alumni group that is becoming advocates for improving conditions for current and formerly incarcerated women) crew helped to populate the app with trauma-informed services that would be helpful to formerly incarcerated women looking to create new lives post-incarceration.  The app is available for Android and Ios.  Here is a video of how the app works: https://www.why-not-prosper.or...

We are seeking to improve the lives of formerly incarcerated women who are recently released from incarceration and in need of basic services to help them find housing, food, healthcare, etc.  This population is underserved because they are released from prison/jail with no discharge planning and no links to services.  They find themselves in communities where they either a) do not know anybody and have no network on which to rely or b) they are in a community where the people they know are the people with whom they engaged in behavior that landed them in the carceral system.  Formerly incarcerated women face a lot of discrimination when seeking supportive, community-based services.  They face racial discrimination, sexism, and discrimination related to being justice-involved.  Additionally, many current and formerly incarcerated women have experienced a fair amount of trauma in their lives including early life exposure to conditions that resulted in higher than average Adverse Childhood Experiences Score as well as sexual trauma in their teen and older years (sometimes even younger).  They are coming into our communities with lots of needs and lots of trauma that needs to be considered when providing services to this population.  We want the service providers working with these women to provide trauma-informed services because we do not want our women to become further traumatized by the service providers that are meant to help them fill their most urgent of needs.

In 2001, Rev. Simmons founded Why Not Prosper, Inc., a grassroots 501C3 organization located in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, PA.  The organization’s mission is to help women in the prison system to discover their own strength and to empower them to become responsible, economically self-sufficient and contributing members of the community.  Since that time, the organization has assisted hundreds of women make a smooth transition from prison to community.  As a formerly incarcerated woman, she has a deep understanding of the needs of women in the prison system.  Her organization now provides Pre-release Mentoring to incarcerated women at Muncy and Cambridge Springs Prisons. 

Over 90% of our staff are formerly incarcerated.  We not only serve current and formerly incarcerated women, we ARE formerly incarcerated women.  We understand their needs because we are them and have been them.  Rev. Michelle Anne Simmons, our Founder and Executive Director, started Why Not Prosper because she saw an infinite number of needs for formerly incarcerated women who wanted to create new lives for themselves and their children.  She is committed to helping current and formerly incarcerated women throughout the country do the same.  

Why  Not Prosper provides a hand-up and not a handout.  Our mission is to help women from prison systems discover their own strength by providing them with the support and resources that will empower them to become responsible, economically self-sufficient, and contributing members of the community.

Our programs help women:

• Find employment 
• Increase job skills
• Retain employment
• Secure safe, decent and affordable housing
• Abstain from alcohol and illegal drugs
• Re-unite with their children
• Not return to prison

Why Not Prosper functions on the philosophy "nothing for us without us".  Formerly incarcerated women sit at every table and are part of every decision at the agency.  This app was an outgrowth of our graduate group Sisters With a Goal (SWAG) that advocates for the rights of current and formerly incarcerated women throughout the country.

We have served 1,936 people since its launch in 2020.

We would like to take our app national and need the help, support, and funding of this initiative to do that.  We believe with this powerful support and platform, we will be able to create a national resource to help so many current and formerly incarcerated people (especially women) throughout the country.

The Women's Recovery & Reentry App is innovative because it was developed by and for formerly incarcerated women to meet a need during the COVID-19 pandemic.  During the pandemic, women were being released from incarceration at all times of the day and night with NO resources.  They were scared, tired, traumatized, etc.  They did not have housing, healthcare, food, etc.  They had nothing and did not know where to turn.  

We are approaching connecting formerly incarcerated women (all formerly incarcerated people actually) to community-based resources to meet their needs.  The innovation is by using an app which is a technology that anyone with a cell phone can access.  Most people have access to a cell phone making this technology accessible to everyone who needs it.  

There is no market for meeting the needs of formerly incarcerated women but our app can change the landscape for this group of people who vitally need connection to resources so they can stay out of the carceral system and become productive members of our communities.

Within the next 5 years, we would like to take our Women's Recovery & Reentry App mainstream throughout the United States in at least 20 larger markets/cities.  The hurdles faced by formerly incarcerated women in Pennsylvania are no different than those faced by women across the US.  Furthermore, the issues faced by formerly incarcerated women now are not going away anytime soon.  With wider distribution of our app including localized resources to help women meet their most immediate needs post-incarceration, we will be able to keep more women out of the carceral system.  This will ultimately break the generational cycles of trauma that exist creating healthier families and ultimately healthier communities.

This impact goal will be achieved by connecting with other organizations throughout the United States serving formerly incarcerated people.  Through these connections, we will gauge interest in supporting a Women's Recovery & Reentry App in their market.  Once they have expressed interest, we will share with them our model, help them to develop their infrastructure to populate the localized information by developing a group of interns and volunteers (we will have the ability to share our committed group with them as needed but would love for each market to develop their own local relationships as part of the sustainability plan), and connect them with our app developer.  Once their app is developed, we will give them ideas on how to promote their app within their market and support their endeavor through sharing of promotional materials and other ideas.

We will measure progress in a number of ways:

1.  The number of downloads of the app;

2.  The number of organizations across the United States we are able to identify as interested in joining our network and replicating the app;

3.  The number of organizations that replicate the app and populate it with localized resources;

4.  The number of positive reviews the app receives once replicated;

5.  The number of people who are connected to vital services using the app;

The Women's Recovery & Reentry App will directly impact issues relating to reentry for formerly incarcerated women in need of direct and swift connection to supportive, life-saving services by putting these services in the palm of their hand (literally).  This is the beauty of the app solution - it is such a simple solution to a problem that is growing larger by the year and impacts generations of people.  In directly connecting formerly incarcerated women shortly after they are released from prison when their needs are more present and urgent, we are able to stabilize them and begin their healing process earlier.  More women return to prison in the first year after they are released than at any other time because they are unable to meet their most basic needs and revert back to ways that have worked for them in the past (or use coping mechanisms like drugs) to meet their needs.  

Our app breaks that cycle through connection and referral to community-based organizations poised to help women meet their most basic needs.

Activities:  

• Create a vetting scale to identify local resources that are appropriate to meet the needs of formerly incarcerated women (trauma-informed, non-discriminatory, etc.).
• Identify partners across the United States in markets where there are large groups of formerly incarcerated women.
• Develop lists of vetted community-based organizations prepared to meet the needs of formerly incarcerated women.
• Integrate agencies into app.
• Promote and launch app in local markets.

Outputs:

• A screening tool that can be used in multiple markets to develop a strong list of community-based partner organizations to serve this population.
• A network of similarly minded organizations to create a safety net for formerly incarcerated women.
• App as a tool for formerly incarcerated women to meet their most immediate needs.
• A network of organizations throughout the country that can share ideas and resources in order to better serve this high-need, fragile community of formerly incarcerated women.
• A strengthened group of formerly incarcerated women who become advocates and activists for the rights of current and formerly incarcerated women, healthy families, and healthy communities. 

Outcomes:

• Identification of a group of agencies well-prepared to serve formerly incarcerated women and support them in creating the life they want for themselves and their children.
• Disruption in the cycle of generational trauma caused by the carceral system in communities of color/BIPOC communities.  
• Disruption in the constant return to the carceral system for many of our women in the United States.
• Healthier communities with decreased violence and citizens who are invested in peaceful solutions because they have had the opportunity to meet their most urgent needs and heal their trauma histories.

Our solution is an app that runs on all mobile operating systems available.  Currently, our app is static with input one-way (from the developer) in the form of loading resources and a search feature by the end-user.  In the future, it would be interesting to add an AI solution with a chat feature to make the app more user-friendly. 

Why Not Prosper is a Black-founded, Black-run nonprofit organization.  Our
Founder & CEO is a black woman who has experienced
discrimination on two fronts – because she is a woman and because
she is Black. She has fought hard to help other women overcome
these obstacles and to lead a diverse, inclusive organization that
promotes equity.  A majority of our leadership team is Black, including all

of our board and most of our staff as well as a majority of our
participants. Our organizational culture, as well as our program
processes, support women by helping them settle into the routine of
specialized and gender-responsive programs with a staff that
understands their fears and shared experiences. Equity is engrained
into their decision-making, and they never seem to forget how Why
Not Prosper molded them and impacted their perspectives. Many
come back to volunteer in various capacities in the organization. As
a Black-led organization, Why Not Prosper operates on a "nothing
about us without us" philosophy which requires that we have
formerly incarcerated women at all levels of the organization. Most
recently, we engaged in an organization-wide DEI assessment to look
at the distribution of staffing and board membership on race, gender
(and gender expression), ethnicity, and sexual orientation. We
learned a great deal from this assessment. In response, we have
become more intentional and increased racial/ethnic diversity in our
hiring of staff and election of board members. By diversifying our
leadership and staff, we are creating more inclusive operational
decisions and policies at all levels.

Additionally, 90% of our workforce are formerly incarcerated people.  We are committed to serving the population we serve because we are them.  Our staff understands the needs of formerly incarcerated women because they have been where our women are.  We support all women, a majority of whom are Black, by helping them settle into the routine of specialized and gender-responsive programs with a staff that understands their fears and
shared experiences. They begin to see themselves in a different light.
They complete their goals and move forward in their lives with grace
and dignity.

Why Not Prosper's business model is represented by 2 central values: "nothing for us without us" and "a hand up instead of a hand out".  These two core values have guided our organization since our inception more than 20 years ago.  Our value to the population we serve rests in our ability to truly understand their most basic needs and help them to remediate their trauma in order to create the life they want post-incarceration.  

Our mission is to help women from prison systems discover their own strength by providing them with the support and resources that will empower them to become responsible, economically self-sufficient, and contributing members of the community.

Our programs help women:

• Find employment 
• Increase job skills
• Retain employment
• Secure safe, decent, and affordable housing
• Abstain from alcohol and illegal drugs
• Re-unite with their children
• Not returning to prison

The app is the first step, an entree, into our menu of programs and services.  Often, women looking for housing come to us for safe, stable, transitional housing.  Once in our program, their case manager helps them to create a WRAP (wellness recovery action plan).  This is followed by education achievement and workforce development education.  Some women enter our Entrepreneurship Academy and start their own businesses.  

Our revenue model is based on grants, contracts, event revenue, and individual donations.  We fully understand that we could monetize the app through advertiser revenue but we are really not interested in this model.  We want formerly incarcerated women to have full access to the app without pesky advertisements that might cause them to cease using the app.   This app belongs to the women who use it to help them when they are most vulnerable.

By using volunteers and interns to vet and manage the community-based resources in the app, we are able to decrease the costs associated with the app.  Once the developer fees are paid, the only funding required is the minimal hosting fee which becomes part of the organizational general operating expenses.

Why Not Prosper has received $500k from the Oak Foundation to help endow our fundraising efforts as well as multiple installments of funding from the MacArthur Foundation for our work in the community.  We also have a $125k contract with the Philadelphia Department of Prisons to provide services in the jails as well as post-incarceration.

The app was an outgrowth of the COVID-19 pandemic in response to needs identified by our alumni/advocate SWAG group.  It required very little funding for start-up and maintenance which Why Not Prosper covered as part of general operating expenses.