It’s easy to be locked up in prison. It’s harder to be locked out of society.” - James Monteiro, Reentry Campus Program Founder & Director Reentry Campus Program (RCP) is a Providence, Rhode Island-based organization working nationally to help currently and formerly incarcerated individuals receive a post-secondary education on their way to becoming self-sufficient and successful. James Monteiro founded RCP after being incarcerated for many years up and down the East Coast. While incarcerated he saw the gap between the learning and experience that were happening on the inside, and how they transferred on the outside. Through his own journey of successful reentry and education, he quickly came to realize that access to education is critical to the pathway to freedom and he wanted to pay it forward. Multi award-winning singer, producer, director and activist John Legend gave RCP its initial major funding seed of $50,000 in late 2017 through Legend’s nonprofit, FreeAmerica, and its accelerator initiative, Unlocked Futures. RCP has helped close to 400 current and formerly incarcerated people since, and several are in high-paying jobs or owning their own businesses. We make post-secondary education accessible, affordable and efficient with our pre-assessment and advising, evaluating the individual’s prior learning and subsequent standardized tests that could allow them to avoid taking unnecessary, costly courses. RCP is also advocating with others on the best ways for current and formerly incarcerated to access post-secondary education. In April 2022, the U.S. Department of Education announced its expansion of the federal government’s “efforts to support reentry, empower formerly incarcerated persons, enhance public safety, and strengthen our communities and our economy.” Another 73 colleges and universities (bringing the total participating post-education institutions to 200) have joined the Second Chance Pell Experiment, an initiative to expand access to federal Pell Grants for incarcerated individuals enrolled in participating programs. RCP and others are advocating to be intermediaries for this initiative because those closest to the problem should be at the forefront of realizing the solution.