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DARE 2 DREAM

Building Post-Secondary Pathways to College Success for Incarcerated Youth

Youth in custody in Orange County, California currently have no access to face-to-face, classroom-based post-secondary instruction, and there is limited post-secondary outreach, engagement, or orientation activities occurring in the county's juvenile justice systems. Higher education remains a severely underutilized public safety strategy.

For years, Project Rebound has partnered with community organizations and local agencies to provide mentorship and college preparation to currently and formerly incarcerated people, leveraging the lived experience of formerly incarcerated university students—many of whom had their educational journeys as youths violently disrupted by the school-to-prison pipeline—to inspire and serve as mentors, forging a pathway for currently and formerly incarcerated people to access higher education and fostering a culture of belonging.

 

Dare 2 Dream: Pathways to College Success

campus-tourProject Rebound at CSUF is committed to supporting the higher education and successful reintegration of formerly incarcerated individuals. The program aims to disrupt the cycle of mass incarceration by building educational pathways that replace the school-to-prison pipeline with opportunities for growth and empowerment. Through mentorship and community engagement, formerly incarcerated students and staff serve as ambassadors of higher education, guiding marginalized youth and people in carceral settings toward college and personal transformation. In partnership with community organizations and local agencies, Project Rebound offers mentorship, academic preparation, and holistic support, using lived experience to inspire others, promote access to higher education, and foster a culture of belonging, resilience, and hope.

Our Mission Statement

Our mission is to support the higher education and successful reintegration of the at-risk and current or formerly incarcerated youth through mentorship and living example of other formerly incarcerated students, graduates, faculty, and staff.

Dare 2 Dream Logo

"Ambition is the path to success, Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in."

-Billy Bradley-

 

DARE 2 DREAM

Led by our Program Director, Juvenile Justice Coordinator, and students, Project Rebound will employ a team of youth empowerment mentors and transfer navigators, each with a lived experience of juvenile incarceration themselves, to provide system-involved youth with a comprehensive, structured college orientation and empowerment curriculum while they are in custody and a continuum of care and mentorship post-release.

Project Rebound

"It takes a village to raise a child."

-African Proverb-

What We Stand For

For over 50 years, Project Rebound has operated with the philosophy that formerly incarcerated people who are closest to the problems of mass incarceration are best poised to devise effective and holistic solutions to those problem. Project Rebound staff and students have faced, and overcome, many of the same challenges as incarcerated youth, and for that reason will serve as ideal mentors, educators, advocates, and transfer navigators to build robust post-secondary pathways and continuity of care for incarcerated and reentering juveniles.

There is a tremendous opportunity for Project Rebound to use our 50 years of experience successfully building a prison-to-college pipeline through seamless prematriculation advising, transfer navigation, and empowerment curricula to inspire and uplift criminally convicted youth to pursue the transformative power of higher education.

Through partnerships with the County Juvenile Justice Court and Project Kinship, Project Rebound will also bring system-involved youth to the CSUF campus and Project Rebound’s community center and housing initiative, the John Irwin House, to immerse them in a collegiate environment surrounded by ambassadors that share their lived experience and can inspire and support them on their post-secondary educational journeys.

Youth participants who complete the college orientation and empowerment curriculum will receive a certificate from CSUF as well as some university paraphernalia to begin to welcome them to the next stages of their collegiate journey. 

Student Goals

AHS-2020

Promote College Pathways:

Our program aims to support youth in pursuing four-year degrees to build academic success, self-efficacy, and stronger communities.

Foster Educational Stability:

Our program provides incarcerated youth with opportunities to design and follow a focused, goal-oriented educational plan.

Support Transformation Through Education:

We consitently engage with underserved youth, both pre- and post-incarceration, by using education as a catalyst for personal growth and change.

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"All it takes is one"
-E

gilbert-2025



gilbert-high2025

"Your life is either easy now and
hard later, or hard now and easy later"
-D

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"Giving the youth a second chance is where our future begins to become greater than ever imagined"
-J

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Collaborate for Rehabilitation:

Our program works closely with courts, correctional staff, social workers, educators, and other key partners to support youth rehabilitation.

Leverage Lived Experience:

 We partner with compassionate community stakeholders and formerly incarcerated college students to deliver meaningful college preparation.

Provide Educational Access:

 We offer on-site and virtual college tours to incarcerated youth, emphasizing education as a pathway to rehabilitation and transformation.

Learning Objectives

Achieve personal validation and self-efficacy as they identify careers and majors that match their passions, skills, values and interests. This exploration helps chart their academic path and strategies for success through graduation and beyond.

Become actively involved in the campus culture, resources and offerings. Opportunities are provided for social integration with community, faculty, and peers. They learn promising practices for test-taking, studying, communicating, writing, time/financial management, research, civic engagement and leadership.

Develop a sense of meaning and purpose with a focus on self-awareness and belonging in a diverse world. Actively participate in learning by critically examining and synthesizing information and making wise choices through metacognition.

Dare 2 Dream Structure