MISSION STATEMENT
Project Liberation’s mission is to FOSTER PERSONAL GROWTH, EMOTIONAL LITERACY AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY by providing a paradigm-shifting personal development platform for women across all stages of criminal legal involvement, while simultaneously using national advocacy and engagement to raise awareness and political will around the issues and needs that specifically face and affect demographically and culturally diverse women.
MOVEMENT BUILDING
Project Liberation is building a movement to disrupt pathways to prison and open doors to sustainable freedom for all women. We do this by intervening at all stages of criminal legal involvement, from pre-trial through reentry. We provide women with the tools they need to reclaim their stories and become catalysts for change in their own lives. Our workshops provide a fusion of evidence-based life coaching, arts-based intervention, yoga, meditation and other trauma informed healing modalities that help women build solid foundations that empower them to see themselves as whole, not broken, within a supportive community.
We believe that for every woman who receives the healing, empowering and supportive services offered by Project Liberation, there is a powerful ripple effect: as these women connect with their own power and sense of purpose, they are able to support their families, give back to their communities, and disrupt the pathways that often lead to imprisonment.
OVER 400 WOMEN HAVE COMPLETED OUR PROGRAMING AND WITH A NATIONAL RECIDIVISM RATE OF 50%, NONE HAVE RETURNED TO PRISON!!!
Project Liberation helps women identify their own visions for living in a healthier and more just world, and then provides connections to organizing and professional opportunities to make those visions a reality.
WHAT WE DO
We provide a safe and supportive space for women who, because of their criminal legal involvement, are often uprooted from their communities and return home isolated and unsupported. The criminal legal system is riddled with external expectations and demands, and the reentry process is fraught with disappointment and adversity. Project Liberation is a dependable source of unconditional acceptance during a highly difficult and isolating time. We are not just another program - it's a community where women can be seen, heard, held, and let love lead.
At Project Liberation we lead with compassion and curiosity, never judgment, so that our clients can come into alignment with their own dreams and desires. There are no experts - we all take part in this transformative process. Over time, we witness our clients standing tall in their own sense of self-worth and creating congruence between their inner and outer worlds, rather than reacting to external pressures. Project Liberation empowers women to become the heroines of their own story as they rebuild their relationship to themselves and the people around them. As these women re-write their own stories of sustainable freedom, they are re-righting the system!
DESCRIPTION OF THE ORGANIZATION
Project Liberation is both a direct service and advocacy organization that empowers women to support one another through a process of self-healing from the trauma of being imprisoned in their lives and use their stories to advocate for reforms. This is accomplished through three mechanisms:
The facilitation of a 16-week group curriculum that empowers circles of women to heal together;
A robust and active alumni network that provides ongoing support for women who have completed the curriculum and creates pathways for women to pursue their personal and professional goals, including working for Project Liberation
The use of speaking engagements, publications, and other advocacy platforms to share the stories of Project Liberation women and advocate for social change.
FOUNDER
Project Liberation was founded by Ivy Woolf Turk, an ICF Certified Professional Life Coach. Formerly Co-Creator and Director of the blackbird project at The Women’s Prison Association, a board member of Liberation Prison Yoga, and an Agent of Change fellow at the Center for Social Innovation, she is currently a consultant to the Justice Advocacy Group, LLC in Alexandria, VA, and a Founding member of the National Council of Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls. She is also a motivational speaker on criminal legal related issues internationally and has partnered with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene for the past five years. Ivy has an extremely unique perspective on incarceration, homelessness and reentry. A former executive in the advertising and real estate businesses, she found herself caught up in a situation with criminal consequences. While incarcerated, Ivy taught GED English literacy, journaling, Yoga and Meditation to groups of demographically diverse women. She also co-created C.H.O.I.C.E.S., a group of inmates that went out into the community to speak to at-risk youth about the consequences of poor choices. Ivy worked with the District Attorney of Connecticut on an Anti- Gun Violence campaign and a movie called the 5k Motion. After serving 4 years of a 5-year sentence in Federal prison, she not only has her own perspective and experience with the whole incarceration process, but that of the hundreds of women with whom she worked with while imprisoned as well as in all stages of the criminal legal process both in the United States, Italy and India.
ORGANIZATIONAL HISTORY
Each year, thousands of women are released from federal and state prisons and millions more cycle through local jails in the United States. They face many obstacles to successfully integrating back into their families and communities as law-abiding citizens. Many come from, and/or re-enter to the challenges and trauma of poverty, abuse, addiction, domestic violence, and poor physical and mental health, as well as the stigma and stress of criminal legal involvement. Many of these challenges – particularly the impacts of trauma – are especially acute among criminally-involved women, who often lack access to necessary supports and resources. Unfortunately, too many of these women will return to prison within 3-5 years of their
release, resulting in significant costs for them, their families, and their communities. Many state and federal agencies have mounted ambitious prisoner reentry initiatives in response to surging corrections costs and the harmful effects of large-scale incarceration on families and communities. However, although recidivism rates have dropped, few, if any, are producing consistent results. Our approach fundamentally challenges the current trend in criminal programming, which tends to pathologize and further dehumanize the people it should be serving. These programs often lead with an assessment of the client's perceived needs and problems, and one-size-fits-all solutions are imposed by outside "experts", resulting in temporary change at best. In contrast, we work with people from a resourceful point of view, collaborating with our clients as they discover and nurture their OWN innate motivations and deep well of resources and abilities that can lead to sustainable freedom.
The majority of current available programs assist people with connecting to supportive structures (e.g. employment, educational opportunities, vocational training, housing, healthcare, etc.). While important, these programs are insufficient if clients do not also receive the social and emotional stabilization that is essential for good decision making and problem solving, coping with adversity and stress, and building the self-worth, esteem, and agency necessary to maintain the other supporting structures that help sustain a law-abiding life.
Project Liberation was formally established in 2016 as an LLC and is fiscally sponsored by Good Counsel Services, Inc. - a 501c3 for the purpose of tax-deductible donations.
However, there were earlier iterations of the program that shaped Project Liberation. Ivy Woolf-Turk began providing holistic wellness services while she was incarcerated, and after her release she established the blackbird project at The Women’s Prison Association in their two homeless shelters. Since leaving WPA to establish Project Liberation, Ivy has continued delivering services and being engaged in advocacy and speaking engagements on an ongoing basis. Partners include The LOHM, Vera Institute, Columbia University, the Correctional Association of NY's Re-Connect Advocacy Program, The NYC DOH/MH, the Bureau of Prisons, the Department of Corrections, CUT 50, GOSO, REFORM, and MANY other justice-related organizations. In 2018, Project Liberation also partnered with the Rackshak Foundation in Kolkata, India and spent a month speaking to and empowering women who were incarcerated or imprisoned in their lives in one way or another.
EXPANSION
As Project Liberation expands, we have committed to hiring formerly incarcerated people and providing professional development opportunities to position women to be in leadership roles within the organization if they so desire. This involves internships, (we currently have a graduate intern) paid positions or having opportunities to be involved in speaking engagements and other organizing/activist opportunities. We will expand our advisory board to include women with criminal legal involvement. Furthermore, Project Liberation is designed to empower women with criminal legal involvement to step into leadership positions in many different facets of their lives – from pursuing higher education, to tending to their families, to starting a business – whatever is aligned with their intrinsic goals and desires. Our impact is reverberating as women become more than their mistakes and uplift others through the process. Most have secured permanent housing, jobs, expanded their education and re-united with their children!!
The next 16-week cohorts will begin on February 8th, 2022 and
will be virtual so women all across the country can participate.
