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One group is helping ex-convicts start anew and empowering them to turn their lives around.
Ladies Empowerment Action Program (LEAP) is a program that helps convicts by empowering them to invest in themselves. LEAP gets after empowering women through three different avenues- community, education, and housing/employment support.
Community is the base for which LEAP begins to help women. All women, upon graduating the program, will be enrolled in the community program for LEAP. The program helps by continuing to help women while fostering success and support for their needs in civilian life. This ensures that women don’t regress or fall back into their old ways when things get hard or when their day to day is less regimented.
While still in prison, LEAP provides education for inmates to set them up for success after their time has been served. In total, LEAP can provide more than 300 hours of continuing education including classes on employment opportunities, life skills, and substance abuse classes. LEAP also provides mentorship and guidance to these women throughout the whole process.
Lastly is the support in housing and employment that comes after the women have been released from prison. LEAP assists inmates in finding affordable housing in the location that they want to live in, as well as find transitional jobs. All of this feeds back into the community that LEAP has created and the success stories are contagious.
This program goes to show you that helping women helping other women can go along way in empowering all women everywhere. And there is truly no better feeling than empowering women to believe in themselves.
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