I cannot thank Level enough for these guides and the knowledge that they contain. All of you all there at Level have given me the opportunity to show the initiative that I am putting into my rehabilitative efforts with each one of these certificates. So, from the four corners of my heart... I say thank you.
AI mentoring for people in prison
Expand Level's innovative prison education program to enable AI mentoring for incarcerated learners who have no access to computers or the internet.
The opportunity
Innovative uses of AI to unlock potential and change lives
Budget
$25,850
$25,850
You may not know this, but people in prison do not have access to computers or the internet. Our innovative prison education program is able to reach nearly any person at any prison in any state with paper-based education and job training modules. Learners send us their completion forms writen by hand, through the mail. Receiving thousands of these a year makes it difficult to give customized feedback and mentorship for learners.
AI can help in two ways. First, we can use AI to automatically transcribe all handwritten completion forms, turning handwriting into machine readable text. We currently use staff and volunteers do this work, but it is time consuming. Second, we can use AI to respond to questions from learners with a custom agent that knows our content, voice, pedagogical style and the learner's previous engagement with our program.
The $25,850 project budget includes three phases. The first phase ($8,750) will expand our technology stack use AI to automatically transcribe the thousands of handwritten completion forms that we receive every year. The second phase ($6,600) will upgrade this AI transcription system for surveying so we can better understand the needs of our learners. The third phase ($10,500) will build a custom AI agent to respond to handwritten questions from incarcerated learners, delivered to them with their certificate in their next shipment of educational material.
Have more questions about funding this project?
We've included answers to some general questions below. Please get in touch with any additional questions. Thank you!
Level is a popular prison education program that offers education, career training and personal development. Level has a unique approach that can reach nearly any person at any prison, even those in high security or solitary confinement. 6,465 people in prison have spent 86,550 hours using the Level program inside 1,036 prisons across the country.
Level sends printed content packets - we call them guides - to people in prison across the country. Our guides are designed to pass the stringent restrictions applied to incoming mail at correctional facilities. People in prison can use our guides in their cells or in common areas. Each of our guides is designed to be a 10 hour study program about one topic. People complete our program at their own pace.
When a learner finishes a guide, they transfer their quiz answers onto a Completion Form and send it back to us. Our system registers their completion of that guide, creates a Certificate of Achievement, and then we send a new guide.
We have successfully been using this system across the country since 2020.
Yes, absolutely! We don't put all that on this page because it's a lot! We are happy to send you detailed project, timeline, budget, measurement and impact information. Please reach out using this contact form and let us know what you'd like to see.
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