Funding to help expand program providing technology, career training to women leaving incarceration in Kansas, Missouri

LAWRENCE — University of Kansas researchers have received a nearly $1.5 million grant to team with area agencies to expand a program that provides digital training to women transitioning from incarceration in the Greater Kansas City area. The training helps provide skills for employment and online security, while helping reduce rates of recidivism.

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation awarded a three-year, $1.48 million grant to the KU Center for Digital Inclusion within the William Allen White School of Journalism & Mass Communications to support the center’s career readiness and technology education initiatives. The funding will allow partners to expand digital literacy and online security training to women about to transition from incarceration. Previously, the program has primarily focused on women who have recently left incarceration.

“We’ll be working closely with Workforce Partnership and Kansas City Public Libraries to expand our career readiness training for this population and also to train future educators to be better prepared to serve justice-impacted communities,” said Hyunjin Seo, Oscar Stauffer Professor of Journalism and Mass Communications and director of the Center for Digital Inclusion. “We are hoping to be a national model for university-community partnerships working on women’s reentry.”

Since 2019, the Center for Digital Inclusion and partners have provided training to nearly 1,500 women transitioning from incarceration in online job applications, professional development and other topics. The expanded program will provide courses in online security, avoiding online scams, basic coding, social media, career readiness and other topics identified as areas of need by previous participants.

In collaboration with community partners, the center has provided services in Brown, Douglas, Johnson, Shawnee and Wyandotte in Kansas, and Clay and Jackson counties in Missouri. Through the Kauffman Foundation grant, the center will work more closely with Workforce Partnership, Kansas City Public Libraries, departments of correction and other nonprofit organizations in Kansas City.

“This grant will provide resources to deepen and expand our work,” Seo said. “We’ll be able to extend in-person training to women in correctional facilities as well as online training sessions for those who have been recently released. Our goal is to reach 1,000 more women during the project period.”

The program will also help train “digital navigators,” formerly incarcerated women who successfully completed the center’s technology education and now serve as mentors and trainers for current program participants. The funding will help expand the current team of six navigators. Technology evolves rapidly, and incarcerated individuals have very little access to things such as social media or training in career readiness. People recently released from correctional facilities are also regularly targeted in online scams.

“This class has helped me in so many ways. It has retaught basic computer skills that I had forgot in the past,” said one previous participant. “It has encouraged me to continue with my life goals with schooling and not give up. If I never had this opportunity, I would not have pursued my education interests.”

In addition to assisting with career readiness and technology literacy, the program has helped reduce recidivism. Seo said her team’s comparative analysis of women who participated in the program versus those who did not showed that program participants had significantly lower rates of recidivism. Available data has shown a less than 5% rate of recidivism among participants. 

Exit interviews with previous participants have also shown that the program has helped them obtain employment and bridge the generational gap between them and their children. 

Seo said the program is helping women more effectively support their children’s education, with nearly 60% of participants having at least one child under the age of 18.

“We have a wonderful team. That is the most important factor,” Seo said. “I believe our approach is vital to ensuring all partners feel they are part of course design and the courses we offer are based on the needs our participants have identified. Technology evolves rapidly, and without relevant digital skills, people cannot fully or meaningfully engage in various aspects of civic life.”