Mellon Foundation Awards New Grants To Expand Prison Higher Education
Summary
The Mellon Foundation has announced that its awarding more than $5 million in new grants as part of its Higher Education in Prisons (HEP) funding, a program designed to expand opportunities and increase resources for higher education with incarcerated individuals.The new grants bring Mellons total HEP funding to over $60 million since 2015 and they come as eligibility for federal Pell Grants will be reinstated this summer for incarcerated learners, thanks to Congress recently lifting the decades-long ban on people in prison being eligible for the federal need-based grants.Mellons support focuses on programs that deliver education and resources to prison populations and formerly incarcerated individuals, emphasizing curricula in liberal arts and humanities that offer a deep understanding of what makes us humanan understanding that is especially needed in the often dehumanizing constraints of carceral settings. Loyola University New Orleans for support of a research base for emerging statewide efforts to expand and improve access to higher education among incarcerated people in Louisiana. Unlocked Labs to support the expansion, scaling, and widespread adoption of an open-source learning management system for prison education programs in the United States. The current grants are part of a larger Mellon idea - Imagining Freedom, a $125 million initiative that addresses problems of mass incarceration and the criminal legal system. "Without educational opportunities, justice-involved individuals like me fail in overwhelming numbers to reintegrate into society, said Jessica Hicklin, Chief Technology Officer of Unlocked Labs.