First and foremost, our community is dedicated to simplifying access to information and resources, so we’re gathering in the messaging platform WhatsApp to facilitate that transmission. This is an information hub for both the incarcerated and their communities.

<aside> <img src="/icons/conversation_gray.svg" alt="/icons/conversation_gray.svg" width="40px" /> Join us on WhatsApp

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We’re organizing around the theme, “Our Light,” inspired by an essay written by one of our team members, an incarcerated man named Derrick Washington. From the inside, Derrick successfully gathered community around his Emancipation Initiative — the namesake to our project, as well as a Massachusetts-based project that challenged life without parole sentences. Our priority is to be a light that an help these kinds of initiatives flourish.

<aside> <img src="/icons/graduate_gray.svg" alt="/icons/graduate_gray.svg" width="40px" /> Learn more about the Emancipation Initiative

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Our central support mechanism is to serve as a fiscal sponsor to inside initiatives like Derrick’s. In the nonprofit sector, a fiscal sponsor provides administrative and financial support to a project that lacks its own legal status as a nonprofit entity. EIN will act as a legal vehicle that empowers community building, continuing to intersect incarcerated and non-incarcerated communities.

Our first call to action is our Peer Pal initiative, where folks on the outside become communication partners with folks on the inside. And we invite people to share their own stories and artwork in WhatsApp and otherwise participate in this project. We’re stronger together.

<aside> 📝 Join the Peer Pal initiative

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We plan to publish narratives and artwork from incarcerated folks who are intimately affected by these issues, and curate and display their work at Night on the Yard, a virtual gallery that features curated works by incarcerated artists. Funds raised through these stories will directly support the struggles of the storytellers.

In the future, we plan on hosting physical events, as well as hackathons to build tools that respond directly to the needs of our participating organizations. We also plan to host workshops — in partnership with organizations already doing this work — and offer an educational resource for those interested in learning about blockchain technology (e.g. web3), which enables us to leverage technology like non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that can:

• more effectively allocate funds to folks affected by incarceration
• measure proof of impact and ensure decentralization
• re-enfranchise people on terms of compassion — lessening reliance on centralized legislative efforts fueled by political agenda

Finally, we intend to partner with legal resources to generate digital certificates as attestation of community action. For example, being a peer pal, organizing an event or workshop, and/or providing grant support are examples of action that confer domain-specific or jurisdictional experience/knowledge. These should be recognized and valued. Doing so signals to the community – and beyond – that this person is an accredited source of support in those domains and jurisdictions.

For folks who are incarcerated, similar certificates can serve as valuable program accreditation that can work toward future employment and future employment.

If this feels meaningful to you, please consider joining us on WhatsApp, where you can get involved by:

• becoming a peer pal with someone currently incarcerated