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Mission Statement
FreeWorld's mission is to end generational poverty and recidivism through high-wage careers and asset ownership.
About This Cause
FreeWorld is a nonprofit organization that helps place returning citizens (and individuals with a criminal record) into high-wage careers so that they can achieve financial security and forge a pathway to home-ownership that enables them to live a stable, fulfilling life, prison-free. Why we started FreeWorld: 1 out of 3 American adults -- more than 70 million people -- have some type of criminal record. To put this in perspective, about the same number of Americans have college degrees right now. FreeWorld is prison slang for life outside of prison. Jason Wang (Founder/CEO) was incarcerated at the age of 15 on a 12 year sentence. While in prison, he always dreamed of, “being released to the free world.” Today that dream has become a reality. Jason was lucky to have support and guidance that enabled him to succeed, despite his criminal history. Unfortunately, that isn't the case for many returning citizens. After serving their time, returning citizens have little support, and job placement for the formerly incarcerated usually begins and ends at low-wage, unfulfilling jobs. Returning citizens, largely minorities, are legally discriminated against, and all but barred from securing a career that pays a livable wage. Nearly half of formerly incarcerated people are unemployed one year after leaving prison; among those who do find work, half earn less than $10,090 a year. (Brookings and Looney) A living wage job is the key to significantly reducing recidivism. Why Now? There are approximately 3.6M truck drivers in the US and the lack of new CDL A drivers is exacerbating our nation's supply chain crisis and driving up costs for consumers. According to the American Trucking Association, an estimated 1.1M new drivers are needed (average 110k/year) in order to keep up with current economic demand. I have never seen a market opportunity like this in my lifetime and I anticipate that the severe shortage will remain until the end of 2023. Right now, we have an incredible opportunity to quickly train returning citizens into local driving positions to jumpstart their ability to take care of their families, pay off debt, establish credit, and earn enough money to get their basic needs met. The revenue opportunity would also allow FreeWorld to accelerate its vision to place a million returning citizens into high wage jobs over the next 10 years. Our Strategy: By focusing on solving basic needs upfront, providing educational services to pave the way towards a high-wage career, and building strong financial foundations with wrap-around support for our graduates, we help them go from financial precarity to stability. This will not only drastically reduce future criminal convictions for our graduates, but will also allow them to break the cycle of generational poverty, in turn decreasing the probability that our graduates’ children will end up in the criminal justice system at some point in their lives. Basic needs: We deploy online services to solve basic needs such as obtaining vital records, transportation, identification, and banking. Educational Services: We train returning citizens in careers that are facing massive labor shortages and pay living wages. This lowers the probability that they will be turned away based on their criminal record and ensures that our graduates are in careers that will allow them to sustainably take care of themselves and their families. Today, that’s trucking. In the future, we plan on deploying services in welding, construction, and other industries. Strong financial foundations with wrap-around support: Post-program, we help graduates file for bankruptcy, increase their credit scores, provide wealth management services, negotiate child support, provide add-on education, plan for home-ownership, start their own trucking companies, save for retirement, and much more. Applicant Journey: Our program is a hybrid in-person/online approach which is scalable. Here’s how it works: Students apply to our program online. Our tech reviews their applications to identify if they need assistance with transportation or obtaining identification or other vital records and notifies us so that we can assist them with getting these services for free from their smartphone. We continue to provide individualized services for each participant as they progress through our program. Students sign up for our CDL A permit classes online to learn the basics of driving a truck Once they pass our quizzes, we provide them funding to take their test at the DMV to get their Commercial Driver’s License Permit as well as take a health exam (required by Federal law). We send students to a local trucking school to get behind the wheel experience and pay for their tuition (we have relationships with trucking schools in 145 locations around the country). We offer conditional cash stipends to enable students to go to school full time. Students are required to link their financial accounts to our platform and sign an Income Share Agreement, where they agree to Pay It Forward once they become successful with a career in the trucking industry. Once a student graduates, we immediately place them into a job and then continue to assist them with advancement opportunities and individualized wrap-around services for three years after graduation. High level insights: 76% of the people that apply for our program are minorities. Over 9,000 years has been spent incarcerated Our applicants leave prison with $11,207 in debt on average 69% of applicants are parents with an average of 3 kids Average credit score is 392 Average age is 39 62% of applicants are unemployed 38% of applicants do not have a bank account Outcomes: What we measure We house the most comprehensive data set for returning citizens of any known organization and we leverage this data to monitor our success and continually provide improvements to our program. Key metrics we use to identify success include: Total # of applicants - Over 1,300 returning citizens have applied to our program. Graduation rate - 178+ returning citizens have graduated from our program so far. Employment rate - 98% of our students find a job within 4 weeks of graduation. Income growth - Graduates start off making $50-120k their first year, which is 5-12x the median average income a returning citizen makes without our program. Recidivism - Less than 1% of our graduates return to prison.