Re-entrance of formerly incarcerated individuals poses a major challenge for the U.S. civil society, though it offers a unique opportunity for Homecomers to rebuild communities and eliminate the pipeline that funnels citizens from the school grounds to the jailhouses.

With the generous support of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Phelps Stokes Fund led a national planning team in designing and delivering a strategy and blueprint to (1) initiate a sustainable movement that can address this new challenge and (2) enlist formerly incarcerated persons who are returning to communities as essential partners and co-workers in creating healthy families, generating strong peer-led support groups, mobilizing neighborhoods, and revitalizing communities.

The national planning team’s works are:

• To empower the majority of Homecomers to be successful, since they do not want to return to prison.
• To inspire Homecomers to want, need and have the capacity to play a central role in shaping and paving the path towards a better life.
• To lead systemic change at multiple levels – grassroots, institutional, policy-making and all points between – and the change must include the removal of systemic barriers to reentry.