University of Oregon students interning at the Prison Education Program volunteer three days a week at Sponsors, Inc., a nonprofit organization in Eugene that provides a variety of support services to formerly incarcerated adults in Lane County.

UO’s Prison Education Program was first established in 2016 and aims to improve educational opportunities in prison by facilitating discussion between students with diverse backgrounds and perspectives to promote shared learning and growth.

PEP gives students the opportunity to attend “Inside-Out” classes, where UO students, called “outside” students, learn alongside imprisoned adults inside the prison, or “inside” students. Inside students are incarcerated at either the Oregon State Penitentiary, the Oregon State Correctional Institution or Coffee Creek Correctional Facility.

Students can also participate in internships at the program, where they help guide classes, work with student applicants and develop other projects for incarcerated people.

PEP interns are offered the chance to support incarcerated individuals once they’ve been released by volunteering at Sponsors For 90 days, participants of Sponsors live in transitional housing units provided by the organization while program workers help them to find employment, healthcare and community resources.

“The goal is that at the end of the 90 days that people are at Sponsors, they have a care team in the broader community that can support them for years to come and they have a stable source of income and stable long-term housing,” Kelly Denmark, director of the Reentry Resource Center at Sponsors said.

Sponsors began a formal partnership with PEP in fall of 2024, with interns initially visiting the center twice a week, which has since gone up to three times a week. Interns help create workshops and presentations and work one-on-one with participants.

“I’ve always been a people person, and love to help people and be able to see the impact of that continued volunteering and building those relationships,” Beatrice Kahn, a PEP intern, said. “I really enjoy helping participants with one-on-one support. In the past, I’ve helped with job applications, especially creating resumes and draft cover letters.”

Interns have also been able to incorporate their own personal experiences and interests in their work. Siqi Zhao, one of two international students in PEP, works with participants at Sponsors to help reconnect them to their culture in the Eugene area.

Zhao hopes to pursue a career in immigration law and use that passion to develop resources for previously incarcerated immigrants, refugees and people of color.

“Recently, I was working on a flyer for cultural activities in Eugene… a lot of people that use this program don’t have access to their culture,” Zhao said. “I was interested in that because of my cultural background. I was born in China, but I grew up in Mexico, so I understand the struggles that immi-grants, and especially re-entry individuals, have to go through every day.”

For PEP intern Rory Forsythe-Elder, having unconventional interests compared to other interns has only enhanced his work at Sponsors. Being a spatial data science and business admin major, rather than the usual political science, Forsythe-Elder has become the unspoken “tech guy.”

“A lot of (participants) haven’t been accustomed to technology in five, 10, sometimes 15 years,” Forsythe-Elder said. “So it’s been pretty cool helping them even with basic stuff, like setting up their emails and applying for jobs.”

Forsythe-Elder attributes his involvement at Sponsors to an Inside-Out class he took last fall, which motivated him to apply for a PEP internship.

“I just kind of fell in love with the program and the idea of having classes in prisons, and having half students on campus and half incarcerated individuals was novel to me,” Forsythe-Elder said. “I wanted to apply and stay with the program, especially because you’re limited to taking one Inside-Out class in college.”

All three of the PEP interns believe that seeing students involved in these programs is important to the services provided by Sponsors.

“For people who have been released from prison, Sponsors is the first stop off,” Kahn said. “So when they see energetic, enthusiastic young people who are spending and volunteering their time to offer support, it really helps strengthen relationships between the university community, as well as the broader Eugene community.”

The mutual impact on students and participants is vital to the partnership between PEP and Sponsors, leading to increased services provided by Sponsors and giving students hands-on experience.

“I think if someone is interested in working in social services, it’s really important to have an understanding of what direct services really look like and what serving individuals with unique needs looks like,” Denmark said. “To be guided and mentored in that work through an internship can be really valuable. In turn, we also really love to see people come to us with passion and ideas. I think the combination of both allows us to give the best care for the people we serve.”