2021 Exemplary Program Development: Arouet Foundation rises to challenge of operating a LISC Financial Opportunity Center

We’ll be honest. We doubted Arouet Foundation’s ability to be a LISC Financial Opportunity Center. Did this small nonprofit have the capacity to handle the financial literacy and credit counseling model of empowering people in marginalized and low-income communities? 

Yes, it does, and then some. 

Not only did Arouet rise to the challenge of operating a LISC FOC over the past three years, it built a strategy around it to help pre-release women in Perryville Prison and the formerly incarcerated. Today, there is no degree of separation between what Arouet is and what an FOC does. 

“The opportunity center is the foundation to everything that we do, which is one of the reasons why we were so excited about becoming an opportunity center,” Arouet Foundation executive director Alison Rapping said. “The opportunity center is sort of the wheel and all of our spokes come out of it.”

LISC FOCs act on the belief that everyone should have a clear path out of poverty. There is a clear, demoralizing nexus between incarceration and poverty. Even pre-trial detention, without a guilty conviction, can lead to damaged credit scores, lost jobs or evictions. Release from prison in Arizona is an onerous, treacherous system with barriers and obstacles that create high odds for recidivism. Many women are released with very little to their name, except $250 in gate money that runs out quickly with costs of transportation, housing, food, clothing and parole fees. 

Arouet was founded in 2011 to help prepare women for success after they leave Perryville. Financial coaching is a key part of a program of services that help women manage life beyond prison gates. The Arouet opportunity and career center assists formerly incarcerated women in gaining soft skills they weren’t able to acquire at Perryville.  Services include one-on-one counseling, job readiness, access to education and network building. It helps women set financial goals, such as building credit scores, make car and home purchases and boost savings. 

Avoiding or mitigating financial stress and building financial health are keys to low recidivism. During the past three years, Arouet has helped more than 1,000 women.  
The recidivism rate of women supported by Arouet is less than 10 percent compared to an Arizona average recidivism rate of nearly 39 percent. 

“The opportunity center wasn’t something we just added on,” Rapping said. “It was actually completely in sync with what we wanted to do that it just allowed us to ramp that up five times faster. LISC was able to help us learn how to do what we already wanted to do.”

Arouet is building upon opportunity center success. This year Arouet formally became part of Perryville Prison’s Second Chances Center. Where once it was doing one class a month at Perryville for 12 women; it’s now doing two classes a month and serving 30 women. 

Upon release, “returning citizens” are welcomed at Arouet, which continues to expand programming.  This fall, the first cohort of 12 women began a program with a Brené Brown certified master trainer based on “The Gifts of Imperfection.”

“We are growing,” Rapping said. “Any woman who has been involved in the justice system is welcome to come to Arouet. We’re getting a lot of referrals, especially because of the opportunity center and because of the work we’re doing at Perryville. People are learning about Arouet and want to be a part of it.”

Turns out Arouet Foundation is the little FOC that could. And can. It continues to forge ahead on a program path that takes formerly incarcerated women to a place of financial confidence and security they need to be to succeed.