Summer Intensive
More than just a summer program. We are committed to reclaiming our truths and setting ourselves free from the stigma around incarceration.
About our Summer Intensive Program
Every summer, we host a six-week summer intensive focused on healing, education, organizing, and art specifically for daughters affected by parental incarceration. We believe that prison abolition cannot happen without healing and we hope to create a space where young women can focus on loving and improving themselves and their communities in the way they see fit.
Here are a few goals/highlights of our summer intensive curriculum:
- A deepened understanding and critical analysis of the prison industrial complex, including how systems of incarceration have shaped our individual and collective experiences, especially as women of color.
- Support individual journeys towards healing and personal transformation.
- Study historical and present movements led by Black people, and people of color.
- Explore multiple mediums of art and creative expression.
- Become involved/take leadership in Sisters Unchained campaigns and advocacy.
This intensive is specifically for young women and girls, ages 14-18, with an incarcerated or formerly incarcerated parent. Participants must live in the Boston or Cambridge area. We hire 8-10 youth to join our summer intensive, every year from July to August.
More about our curriculum:
Sisters Unchained facilitates political education workshops that teaches about the prison industrial complex, centers the voices of Black and Brown freedom fighters, and is rooted in principles of transformative justice. We educate youth about different liberation movements throughout the country led by Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities. Our internal education during programming strengthens our actions of solidarity in our communities. We aim to support the leadership of daughters affected by parental incarceration to engage in art, advocacy and organizing.
Above all, we support our sisters/siblings by identifying tools for emotional wellness and creating intentional space to process losing or loving an incarcerated parent. Often, parental incarceration is just one out of many traumatic experiences that young people are forced to endure. Thus, our curriculum has a significant focus on self-love, mental health, and exploring various mediums of artistic expression. The objective of our curriculum is to collectively engage one another through the exchange of historical and cultural knowledge, skills, stories and lived experiences that will honor multiple paths towards healing, empowerment, and self-determination.