Georgia State University’s Alonzo A. Crim Center for Urban Educational Excellence and Georgia-based nonprofit RestoreHER will host a virtual debut screening and discussion of a documentary entitled, “The COVID-19 LeadHERship Project,” on Friday, Nov. 13, from 6-8 p.m.
This film, funded by the Leadership Learning Community and in partnership with the Crim Center, centers on women of color released from prison during the COVID-19 pandemic, who recorded their experiences as they reentered society during a major public health crisis.
“These women created a survey collecting real-time data from other incarcerated and formerly-incarcerated women to identify community resources that we made available through an online database,” said Pamela Winn, RestoreHER founder.
Winn has personal experience with the prison system, having served a 78-month federal sentence for a white-collar crime while pregnant before beginning her advocacy work for women who have experienced trauma, incarceration and post-incarceration life. She founded the National Advisory Board of Pregnant Women in Prison, was an invited speaker at the White House's first Prison Reform Summit and Criminal Justice Reform Summit, and was instrumental in the passage of the federal First Step Act in 2018.
The Nov. 13 documentary screening and discussion is one of several events leading up to the 15th Annual Sources of Urban Educational Excellence Conference, which will focus on equitable and socially-just educational opportunities for children in urban communities, and visions of what urban education will mean for individuals, communities, the nation and the world moving forward.
“RestoreHer and the Crim Center have a shared goal of supporting directly impacted women – and others in our community – learn how to conduct and use community-led research and data to connect their lives to their dreams,” said Dana Salter, Crim Center associate director. “The resources that the women in the project have identified via their survey and research will help so many to move their lives forward during this time and beyond.”
To register for this event, click here.
RestoreHER is a policy advocacy reentry organization led by and for justice-involved women of color. RestoreHER addresses the social determinants of criminalization and intersectionality of social inequities through education, leadership and policy change to protect the dignity, reproductive justice and restore the rights of all women directly impacted by incarceration, convictions and/or trauma. For more information, visit https://www.restoreher.us.