History

FEPPS grew out of the Women’s Village at WCCW.

In 2008, residents of WCCW started discussing what it would mean for people in WCCW to live in a village where they worked to improve their lives while incarcerated. The culmination of this work was the Women’s Village* - a space and community for people to create positive change in their own lives by “harnessing the unique strengths of women and promoting a positive environment in our current community.” The Village continues to provide services and programs to promote education, self-empowerment, life skills, health and wellness, self-care and disease prevention for the residents of WCCW.

The Education Council of the Village invited professors to the prison to talk about how to build a higher education program in 2011 and began to grow the program we now call FEPPS. The first FEPPS classes were not-for-credit, taught by volunteer instructors from the University of Puget Sound and Evergreen State College. Between 2012 and 2014, early FEPPS students took courses in Political Science, English, Sociology, Mathematics, Philosophy and more - courses that many of these students would go on to repeat once FEPPS began a partnership with Tacoma Community College in 2014 to accredit our courses. The passion and tenacity of these program founders lives on as FEPPS has grown our student body, degrees, and course offerings.

*Despite our shared history with the Women’s Village, FEPPS no longer uses gendered language to refer to our student body. Read more about this on our Mission & Values page.