Earlier in 2021, Rasheeda Bagwell joined the Philadelphia-based nonprofit Mural Arts Philadelphia through its Restorative Justice Program to lead a new pilot project: The Women’s Reentry Program.
“Modeled after the nonprofit’s widely successful Guild Program — a reentry apprenticeship for system-impacted people that launched in 2009 — the pilot program was an experimental third branch of the Guild programming. They already have a men’s program as well as a co-ed program. But until 2021, they had nothing designed specifically for women. For Bagwell, the Women’s Reentry Program helps solve two big problems in Philadelphia: the lack of services for system-impacted women, and more importantly, stopping the cycle of incarceration within multiple generations of the same family.”
By Marielle Argueza for Next City