We are dedicated to promoting and advocating for higher education for currently and formerly incarcerated men and women. P2P is proud to be founding member of the Unlock Higher Ed coalition. This coalition is comprised of organizations and stakeholders across the nation to help bring awareness to and to change policies that will help legal-system involved men & women obtain higher education
 
The steering committee of the Unlock Higher Ed coalition has been carefully considering how to build upon the collective successes in 2019. As higher education in prison programs across the nation are scrambling to transition courses to correspondence and students are feeling the loss of contact with professors and academic community members, it seems even more pressing that we uplift the importance of higher education programming in prisons and continue to push for federal and state legislation to support these programs.

In 2020, the primary focus is to build and increase the coalition membership and network across the nation to carry out their efforts to the finish line and beyond.

SHARED VALUES AND THEIR PRACTICAL IMPACT:
Accountability and Trust:
We commit to building trust by developing accountable relationships where we value communication & collaboration, have respect for the dignity & experience of our coalition partners, are conscious of power dynamics, and take personal responsibility for our
actions.
Broad participation:
​We take responsibility for making space for a range of community voices, including those directly impacted by unfair and/or extreme legal system practices. We create internal policies and procedures that encourage as many people as possible to join.
Frontline leadership:
We commit to prioritizing input from communities directly impacted by unfair and/or extreme legal system practices.
Inclusivity and transparency:
We commit to sharing as much information as possible among coalition partners. To foster inclusion and informed decision-making, we each commit to being responsive to emails, to regularly joining Coalition calls, and to being vigilant in terms of responding/engaging.
Safety: 
We understand that “safety” includes threats to personal, family, and community safety posed by incarceration/surveillance in general and by biased incarceration/ surveillance in particular.
Solution-oriented: 
We are committed to addressing conflict immediately and directly and to putting the overall campaign goals ahead of personal or organizational ego or credit.
Strength through difference:
We value difference and know that it makes us stronger. We commit to soliciting and incorporating into decision-making as many different viewpoints as possible to get the best outcome. We value working from a place that validates the lived experiences of people and their families and communities, and the ways in which it impacts people’s decisions and points of view.
Transparent decision-making:
We commit to transparent and inclusive decision-making and to seeking consensus among Coalition partners whenever possible. When decisions must be made quickly, they will be made by Coalition Leads and the Legislative Author according to the process laid out in this agreement. Each of us commits to being consistently engaged so that transparency and consensus decision-making is possible.

UNLOCK HIGHER ED IN ACTION - ADVOCACY DAYS

www.UnlockHigherEd.org