While Cal State Fullerton isn’t the first campus to launch a Project Rebound program, the university has been among the forerunners in its expansion, becoming a model for Project Rebound programs at the other universities in the CSU system.
Founded on the conviction that education is one of the most powerful mechanisms for transforming lives, Project Rebound was designed to help formerly incarcerated individuals earn college degrees.
After being the first of the 19 Cal State campuses with Project Rebound programs to offer housing for formerly incarcerated men, CSUF’s Project Rebound is now in the process of establishing housing for formerly incarcerated women.
A $500,000 county grant has made this possible.
“Women, oftentimes, are just left out of the conversations when we’re talking about what the needs for returning citizens are,” said J.C. Cavitt, executive director of Project Rebound at CSUF and former Project Rebound scholar. “We want to make sure that we do acknowledge that women do have needs when it comes to housing, and some of their needs look a lot different than the men when they return home, and so we’re trying to close that equity gap there.”
The grant is coming from Fourth District Supervisor Doug Chaffee’s discretionary fund and was approved Dec. 3 by the Orange County Board of Supervisors.
Chaffee expressed support for Project Rebound, adding that two interns who worked in his district office went through the program.
“Cal State Fullerton’s Project Rebound has transformed many lives of formerly incarcerated people in obtaining a higher education and decreasing recidivism in Orange County,” Chaffee said in a statement.
Cavitt and his staff are actively looking to purchase a house about 2.5 miles from campus and hope to begin offering housing for women in the fall.
“Having a safe place for a returning female to lay her head is critical in them being successful not only with the reentry, with college, but actually being a productive member of society, so the long-term goal is building their life,” the executive director said.
Currently, women entering Project Rebound in need of housing are referred to outside facilities, Cavitt said.
Others travel from great distances, and some have even slept in their cars, said Project Rebound program assistant Nicolle Chafey, who is also a former Project Rebound scholar — the name given to students in the program — and CSUF graduate.
“I was lucky enough to be able to rent out an apartment,” Chafey said. “I had a one-bedroom apartment with my son. There’s always a big waiting list when it comes to the men’s house. There’s definitely not enough beds to meet the needs. And so, I feel like with us having a women’s house, I think it’s just the right thing to do. And I think it’s just going to open doors for a lot more women that really didn’t have a safe space to focus on their education.”
Cavitt hopes to accommodate from six to nine women in the new house.
In 2018, CSUF’s Project Rebound opened the John Irwin Memorial House, named in honor of John Irwin, who founded Project Rebound in 1967 at San Francisco State University.
While serving a five-year sentence for robbery at Soledad Prison, Irwin took college courses and earned a doctorate at UC Berkeley after his release.
“Recognizing how effective and the impact of what the John Irwin House has done for students, I want to make sure that that same opportunity is there for our female students, as well,” Cavitt said.
Chaffey, who spent several years in and out of the criminal justice system, was already in the process of turning her life around and was attending CSUF, unaware of Project Rebound.
“I was on campus, feeling very, very much like a fish out of water,” said Chaffey, who was 30 at the time. “I did not feel like I belonged. It was just really a big challenge for me. And then when I heard about Project Rebound being on campus, I couldn’t believe it. There’s other people here who are like me. I eventually found my sense of belonging on campus where I could walk around and think, yeah, this is my school, too. So, it was definitely life-changing for me.”
Chaffey earned a bachelor’s degree in human services and just started her final semester of graduate school, where she is earning a Master of Social Work degree.
In May, CSUF graduated 35 Project Rebound scholars, the most since the program began on the campus in 2016.
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