Our Impact

Providing culturally responsive and trauma-informed programs

Each year, Community Works serves more than 1,000 children, transition-age youth, and adults, including those incarcerated or returning home from jail or prison, survivors, and young adults diverted from the system. Our programs are culturally responsive and trauma-informed. The impact of our programs:

44%

Reduction in Recidivism

through our Make It Right program in San Francisco County.

98%

Satisfaction

of survivors of harm would participate in our youth diversion programs again.

46%

Fewer Arrests for Violent Crimes

for participants in the Resolve to Stop the Violence Program, according to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. The School awarded RSVP a National Innovations in American Government Award.

$55,000+

Guaranteed Income Program

distributed to people returning home through our first-in-the-national guaranteed income pilot launched during COVID.

Systems Change

Participants successfully advocated for policies to improve the lives of children with incarcerated parents, including:

  • Training and protocols required for the SF Police Department to reduce trauma when arresting a parent
  • Instituting user-friendly and online improvements to the SF Sheriff’s Department “inmate locator” so that children can locate and contact their parents
  • Free phone calls between incarcerated parents and their children at the SF County Jail Granting 16-year-olds the ability to visit their parents on their own in SF County Jail without another parent or guardian present
  • Three private contact visits for children and their incarcerated parent to say goodbye and develop a communication plan in advance of the parent transferring from SF County Jail to the CA state prison system

Art Exhibitions 

Three decades of art exhibits around the Bay Area including The Sentence Unseen: Portraits of Resilience, in 2015 on Alcatraz and hosted by the National Park Service.