5 days ago
It's going down! Emerging Leaders is heading to Seattle, WA! Register here for the FREE event!!
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Prison Scholar Fund shared a link.
5 days ago
Forgotten Prison by KNKX Public Radio on Apple Podcasts
itunes.apple.com
Download past episodes or subscribe to future episodes of Forgotten Prison by KNKX Public Radio for free.2 weeks ago
Excited to announce one of our newest Prison Scholars, David Moore. Gotta turn the volume up a bit to hear David's plan for his future: "I'm going to be able to repay society"! And with Kurt at the PSF, we're opening up more opportunities for those serious about reinventing themselves through education.
Crystal Moore, JustLeadershipUSA, FreeAmerica
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The Internal Revenue Service recognizes the Prison Scholar Fund (PSF) as a section 501(c)(3) public charity. Gifts to the PSF are tax deductible in the U.S.A.
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Success Stories
Robert Wood
U.S. Penitentiary | Lompoc, CA | Adams State University
Kurt Danysh
State Correctional Institution | Frackville, PA | Lehigh Carbon Community College
In a system where men, women, and children have been thrown into warehouses where the idea of rehabilitation has long ago been abandoned, the Prison Scholar Fund is evidence that not everyone has given up on me.
The Prison Scholar Fund believed in me… and now I believe in myself.
Terry Mowatt
Stafford Creek Corrections Center | Aberdeen, WA | Adams State University, Business
An education is so powerful. Especially coming from my vantage point in life, because I am of the demographic in prison who will have served over twenty years once I am released. Sadly, most programs offered to me are only available once I have served my time, and for others like me serving decade long sentences, we do not have an idea of what our support systems will look like once we are released. So for myself and many others, the only guarantees we have are the education and skill sets we acquire in prison. I want to be as prepared for society as I can and this preparation occurs with career building opportunities that I am able to take advantage of now.
Once I am released I never want my lack of education or skills to be the cause of a return to prison. So every day I awake here I spend it building the foundation of my future life, and an education is the cornerstone of that foundation from which my future will be built.
Bruce Bennett
Stafford Creek Corrections Center | Aberdeen, WA | Adams State University

Pursuing an education while incarcerated can sometimes seem both arduous and hopeless for a prisoner with minimal resources. Such an education is often earned through informal studies, institutional programs always in danger of budget cuts, and charity from family, friends, or organizations like the Prison Scholar Fund. Still, the accomplishments are immensely rewarding. My education in prison has literally been an awakening of the mind, certainly comparable to giving eyesight to the blind. In addition to the invaluable personal enrichment, I have developed research skills, honed a capacity for critical thinking, and regulatory exercised an ability to articulate a thought, an idea, or a civilized argument. Nurturing these qualities undoubtedly, facilitates life-building aspirations and confidence.
Steven Masservy
Alfred D. Hughes Unit | Gatesville, TX | Louisiana State University
Tonya Wilson
Washington Corrections Center for Women | Gig Harbor, WA
Education in prison has a way of centering a person, not just in terms of their doing time in a way that reduces violence or recidivism rates, although those things are important in their way. Everyone wants to have a place in society; we are social creatures, and are socialized to allocate our value and our worth in terms of our place. Those who live on the margins aren’t born knowing that they are on the margins. We aren’t taught as little kids that the opportunities of life in America drilled into us at school, in history and social studies, have nothing to do with us, with *people like us*. Only after coming to prison did I come to understand that the margins of a society exist for certain people and that I was one of those people. For those not affected personally by incarceration, they don’t think about how the social forces influence the lives of individuals whether they know it or not, and how people become empowered (or disempowered) within their social positions. Through education, I’ve begun to comprehend that my position in relation to others and to global influences isn’t static, and that I have the agency not only to change my position, but to also affect change in my current community initially, and the greater community upon my release. One of the most valuable things about educating incarcerated people is that they learn that they can be agents of positive change within their own lives and the lives of their families and their communities.
Today, I’m pursuing my Associates of Liberal Arts and Science degree; upon completion of this semester (in which I’m taking environmental science and English comp), I will be 25 credits away from my goal, and this is just the beginning of my academic career. I will never be a traditional college student, but I believe that unconventionality in academic pursuit is essential to the vitality of academia, a way of walking through the world that can and has become removed from its potential to foster real change. The academic establishment for a prisoner can be an ecotone bridging between the world as a place of dysfunction as well as a site of resistance.
Antoine Wicker
Greensville Correctional Center | Jarratt, VA | Ohio University, Sociology
That’s why the work of the Prison Scholar Fund is so important. The men and women who have come to appreciate learning, who have become empowered by education are the very people that abandon their criminal behavior and utilize learning for productive citizenship. Additionally, there are others who have enough insight to be useful in contributing ideas for resolutions to some of the most pressing issues in our prisons and society.
Just imagine the difference in prisoners when the proper resources are available to those who desire to use them to their best advantage! Dirk [the PSF’s Executive Director] is a refreshing example of what a clear vision and a reformative purpose can accomplish.
Curtis Frye
Lakeland Correctional Facility | Coldwater, MI | Louisiana State University
I can honestly say that the Prison Scholar Fund (PSF) forever changed my life. In helping me to enroll in my first college course, The PSF served as the catalyst that allowed me to experience the enriching, mind-expanding world of post-secondary education. And with yet only a small taste of that experience, I developed an entirely new outlook on life and began to realize how corrosive and harmful the criminal lifestyle I had been living actually was. I no longer wanted any part of it. Instead, I wanted to become a more productive person and to help other inmates encounter the life-changing effects of post-education. Thanks to The PSF I understood what the Irish poet William Butler Yeats meant when he said that “[e]ducation is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” The old, irresponsible me had begun to burn away as I began to become a much happier, more constructive person.
In my heart these achievements, blessings, and life-altering changes I accredit to the kindness and generosity of The Prison Scholar Fund. Without their having believed in me and their having afforeded me the opportunity to take part in the college experience, my life would have likely continued down the solemn, shallow path of despair and destruction that is the criminal lifestyle. Do not mistake me; I am not claiming that today I am a model of inspiration–I still have unlimited room for growth. However, I am now a markedly better adjusted, well rounded human being thanks to the road The Prison Scholar Fund help open for me. Their compassionate actions epitomize the sentiments of the nineteenth century writer and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe when he said, “Treat a man as he appears to be and you make him worse. But treat a man as if he already what he potentially could be, and you make him what he should be.”
Vy Le
Stafford Creek Corrections Center | Aberdeen, WA | Louisiana State University
I am glad this window of opportunity is opening up for me, and I can’t wait to take full advantage of it.
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