Project Description
Overview
For decades, mass incarceration has severely impacted our Fairhill-Hartranft community.
Since our founding, The Village has offered holistic arts-based responses to the needs of community members coming home from prison. Today, our core re-entry program is the People’s Paper Co-op, which creates safe and supportive employment opportunities for women in reentry to serve as essential experts in transforming the current criminal legal system.
Together, these courageous women create arts and advocacy campaigns that aim to shift public awareness toward supporting an end to the incarceration of women; toward exploring alternatives to prisons; and toward understanding that incarceration is a continuation of policies rooted in racism, oppression, and control.
Testimonial
“When I came here I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t trust myself or my community. Now I’m ready to soar.”
— Michelle Scales, People’s Paper Co-op Fellow
“We The Women”: A Film For Queen Bees
This original short film was designed and directed by the PPC Fellows. Watch as they perform an original poem, “We the Women,” written collectively with Philadelphia’s Poet Laureate Yolanda Wisher. Film by Wren René.