We are a Black-owned cooperative business, founded by and for formerly incarcerated people.

We founded this co-op because we believe that everybody deserves a fair chance. We intend to create job opportunities for ourselves and our loved ones who are coming out of prison. Our community deserves a chance to make a decent living, provide for our children, and break generational cycles of poverty and incarceration.

We believe that formerly incarcerated individuals are fully capable of contributing to our state’s economy as skilled employees and taxpayers, if only we are given a chance. Formerly incarcerated people are significantly more active in seeking employment than the general American population, and we become dedicated, valued employees if provided the opportunity.

Despite our desire to work, institutionalized discrimination has created an unemployment rate among the formerly incarcerated population that is five times higher than that of the general United States population. Nationwide, there are 75,000 laws and statutes that bar formerly incarcerated people from everything from housing, to jobs, to health care, to food stamps. 70 percent of these laws impact employment. Without access to stable employment, many formerly incarcerated people are forced to survive through social services and criminalized work and often return to prison.

1 in 3 people in Rhode Island have a criminal record, which means that incarceration, recidivism, and the collateral consequences are financially costly to the Rhode Island public. But there is a human cost as well: the discrimination that follows formerly incarcerated individuals destroys lives, families, and communities. After meeting all of the demands of a criminal sentence—incarceration, probation, drug and/or mental health counseling, fines and restitution—our community members continue to be punished with a life sentence of poverty and instability that ripples out over generations.