United Black Family Scholarship Foundation

For a long time, I felt like my life story had already been written for me. Like many formerly incarcerated people, I returned home carrying more than a criminal record. I carried shame, anger, and the overwhelming understanding that society often expects people like...

From Prison Leadership to Nonprofit Careers: How the In-Building Self-Help Program (IBSHP) Creates a Pipeline of Community Leaders Inside California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation facilities, rehabilitation programs often focus on individual...

Creating My Own Opportunities : Building a Pathway to Gainful Employment From Inside Prison By Ivan Kilgore When people ask me how I prepared for gainful employment after prison, I tell them something many people do not expect to hear : opportunity is not something...

Building My Lifeline: The First Time I Negotiated With Prison Administration to Start a Program By Ivan Kilgore I landed on B-facility at CSP-Sac in 2011 with the kind of quiet dread you don’t always admit out loud. It wasn’t just a housing move from C-yard to B-yard;...

Intersectionality Behind Bars By Isabella Cain Women’s History Month calls us to remember, celebrate, and amplify the voices of women who have shaped our world, often against extraordinary odds. Yet too often this recognition excludes one of the most marginalized and...

Women’s History Month: Memory, Movement, and the Responsibility of Truth By Ivan Kilgore Every year, Women’s History Month invites me to pause and reflect not only on the victories that have been won, but on the work that still remains. For me, it is a time to...

Redefining "Rehabilitation" By Isabella Cain, UBFSF Media & Marketing Director The word “rehabilitation” implies restoration. It suggests healing, renewal, and reintegration, however, in the context of incarceration, rehabilitation has often meant something very...

Care & Cooperation: Leadership Rooted in Humanity By Ivan Kilgore, UBFSF Founder When I first began reflecting on this month’s theme—care and cooperation—the answer came to me almost immediately. What surfaced was not a theory, framework, or abstract leadership...

Expanding Leadership Education for America’s Incarcerated By Ian Wilson, UBFSF Project Manager My name is Ian Wilson and I serve as the Project Manager for Nonprofit Coaching and Leadership Training for America’s Incarcerated (NPCLT), working under Ivan Kilgore and...

On Sustaining Collaborative Partnerships By Zebulon Miletsky, PhD Considering this year’s theme of “Care and Cooperation: Partnerships that Work” leads me to meditate on my own methods to sustains collaboration—and our larger effort to create such a thing at the...

Successful Inside-Out Restorative Justice Programs Are Possible By Isabella Cain For decades restorative justice programs within the United States have focused on outside-in tactics. How can people or groups outside of the system help those individuals inside, where...

Making Charitable Donations to Non Profits By Desiree Cain, CP Making charitable donations is a wonderful way to support causes you care about. What many people don’t realize is that the IRS offers tax benefits that can make your gift even more impactful....

Partnerships vs. Charity — Empowering Incarcerated Leaders: A First-Person Reflection for the Launch of The New Wave By Ivan Kilgore, Founder, United Black Family Scholarship Foundation (UBFSF) For years, I’ve sat inside these concrete walls watching how...

We Are Not Yet Free — And That’s Why We’re Launching The New Wave By Ivan Kilgore This past week, I had a powerful conversation with my comrade Max Parthas. We were talking about freedom, a word so often used, especially around national holidays like Juneteenth, but...

The Importance of Radical Activism in 2025 By Isabella Cain In 1964, Malcolm X stood before the Organization of Afro-American Unity and declared: “You’re not to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or who says...

The People with the Worst Backgrounds Build the Best Futures: What Malcolm X Taught Me About Redemption, Resilience, and Revolution By Ivan Kilgore When Dr. Ilyasah Shabazz said, "The people with the worst backgrounds build the best futures," I felt those words in my...

Memoir as a Tool for New Futures, Behind and Beyond Bars Building Writing Communities in a Story Based Strategy for Redemption and Healing and Growth By Erika Duncan, Founder and Director of Herstory Writers Network What might happen if people who were incarcerated...

From a Prison Cell to a Movement: Why Building Community Matters By Ivan Kilgore Shortly after going in, I realized I had to do more than just survive. No, I needed to create something that reach beyond these concrete walls. I founded UBFSF from a maximum-security...

Volunteer Highlight By Taos Washington Since joining the United Black Family Scholarship Foundation (UBFSF) in August 2023, I have progressed through several roles, each enhancing my ability to drive meaningful change within underserved communities. Beginning as the...