This month, Hopeworks Web Associate Hien Nguyen began giving back to the community with her new skills by volunteering with Girl Develop It’s Up Program to teach web development to incarcerated women! Hien is a teaching assistant in the program while their Hopeworks supervisor and Web Director, Billimarie Lubiano Robinson, is teaching coding in the UP Program.
UP - Unlocking Potential of Underserved Women - began as a pilot program in December 2017 with funding from Capital One and Barclays. For the past year, GDI’s UP Program team has been going into Baylor Women’s Correctional Institution (BWCI) in New Castle, DE to teach beginner web development classes.
With limited access to relevant professional development, incarcerated women have the most to gain from learning 21st-century skills, especially web development, in order to provide them with more opportunities when they reenter society and the workforce. This innovative program was established to assist incarcerated women to: increase knowledge and awareness of technology, acquire coding and web development skills, enhance self-efficacy; and build confidence, hope, and an openness to try new things.
GDI believes that “teaching incarcerated women is fully aligned with our mission to provide accessible and judgment-free opportunities for diverse women from all backgrounds interested in learning web and software development...Among women prisoners, research shows that the rates of recidivism are high. Our goal is to support the students who return to society by welcoming them into our nearby communities to help them continue their learning and to get involved in a network they wouldn’t otherwise be aware of.”
Hopeworks is so proud the Web team and their desire to help others take control of their futures.
Learn more about this program on this GDI blog post from their first cohort in 2017.
New Partnership Aligns Organizations' Missions of Uplifting Communities Through Access to Key Pathways for Success Camden, NJ – October 15, 2024 – Hopeworks, a nonprofit social enterprise dedicated to empowering young adults to establish living wage careers, is thrilled to announce a new partnership with The Foxwynd Foundation. The Foxwynd Foundation, through its Donor Advised […]
CAMDEN – Hopeworks, the Camden-based nonprofit that offers a variety of training programs that prepare young people to earn a livable wage in the workforce, has received a $660,000 grant to support students with scholarships as they learn to be EMTs and medical assistants. The Haines Family Foundation of Egg Harbor City, Atlantic County, awarded the […]
For a quarter century, the organization — which has offices in Camden and Kensington — has helped students realize big aspirations. Today, it offers computer training with trauma-informed care. How can someone even dare to hope? Where is hope when home is friends’ couches, a different one every week, when depression hangs like a heavy […]
