The Petey Greene Program

Program Overview

The Petey Greene Program supports the academic goals of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people through high-quality volunteer tutoring programs. PGP recruits 1,000 volunteers annually tutoring over 2,000 incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people.

PGP recruits and trains volunteers (mostly students from local colleges and universities) volunteer tutors to provide supplemental educational support to incarcerated and re-entering students with a focus on adult basic education and some college preparatory courses. Volunteers participate in four 2-hour pre-service training sessions that educate them on the history of mass incarceration and the work of our organization, while providing them with pedagogical tools for effective tutoring. PGP staff also supports volunteer tutors throughout the semester with one-on-one meetings and follow-up trainings that provide an avenue for the discussion of issues such as ethical volunteerism and the challenges of working in the carceral environment.

Incarcerated and formerly incarcerated students are recruited through partnerships with correctional facilities and local reentry organizations. At the beginning of each semester, they work with tutors and PGP staff to set their academic goals. Most of the students we serve are pursuing their GED, high school diploma, or ESL certification, while a minority is enrolled in college courses. During the semester, students and tutors meet for weekly 1-hour tutoring sessions. All tutoring sessions are currently held remotely and will return to be offered in person once the pandemic subsides.

Student and Volunteer Success Stories

A Volunteer's Perspective

"I see my Petey Greene experience the same way that I saw Rikers Island in the rearview mirror following my first visit. It's powerful. Great education in and of itself doesn't change you. It's the experience embedded in the education that is transformative. Petey Greene provides an extraordinary path to that transformation."

"I grew up in a community where no one faced the same problems as my students on Rikers Island. I found the disparate environments unsettling. There was so much violence on the Island. Seeing Rikers in the rearview mirror after my first visit, I could not unsee what I had seen. I either needed to devote the rest of my life to fixing it or turn a blind eye. There was no middle ground."

Insia chose the path to "fixing" what she could not unsee. As her passion for supporting incarcerated students grew, it shaped her undergraduate experience at NYU and beyond. By the final semester of her senior year, she was tutoring on Rikers four days out of five. Insia learned a great deal from these sessions. They were as affecting for her as the academic support she provided was for her students.

"I remember working with a group of gregarious adolescent boys. I thought why don't we separate what they did from who they are. All of the students I worked with were starving for individualized attention. They had the same dreams and aspirations that I had when I was their age."

Following her graduation from NYU, Insia joined Teach For America. She spent two years supporting low-income students in Compton, California. Today, she works as an analyst for UBS while preparing to pivot back into social equity work. Her goal is to address education policy to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline.