Editor’s Note: Loop21 interviewed Rev. Vivian Nixon, who has made incredible progress since being incarcerated for nearly four years. Nixon, Executive Director of the College and Community Fellowship (CCF), was recently selected to be part of the inaugural class of the Aspen Institute Ascend Fellowship Program.
As executive director of the College and Community Fellowship (CCF), Rev. Vivian Nixon knows well the elation students who graduate her program feel when they complete their coursework. She was, after all, one of them: A woman who had been incarcerated for almost four years, confused and perhaps more than a little afraid that life’s opportunities were going to pass her by without a chance for her to claim a dream.
She’s done all that, now, and then some. CCF offers mentoring, tuition programming and academic support to women with criminal convictions. Rev. Nixon has helped grow the program from 6 participants per year to over 300 in a span of just ten years at the helm. Seventy percent of CCF clients complete their degrees within four years, many of which complete master’s programs. How transformative is this education? Just 2% of CCF alumna have been re-arrested or re-incarcerated and that’s compared to 30% of the total women prisoner population. This is part of the reason Rev. Nixon was chosen to be a part of the inaugural class of the Aspen Institute Ascend Fellowship Program. She will work with some of the leading minds in the country to formulate multi-generational approaches to help families out of poverty.
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