Project ReMADE is based at Stanford Law School. Our goal is to empower entrepreneurially-minded, formerly incarcerated people to start new businesses.
Project ReMADE | Reentry: Making a Difference Through Entrepreneurship, is a highly regarded entrepreneurship training and support program for formerly incarcerated people. Our goal is to empower formerly incarcerated people with small business training through a comprehensive curriculum and intensive one-on-one mentorship, so that participants gain the tools necessary to start and operate a business—either as their sole form of employment, or to enhance their employment prospects and increase participants’ total income.
Candidates for Project ReMADE are recruited from all over the Bay Area and must pass a rigorous selection process, including strict eligibility guidelines that reflect reentry stability and readiness for an entrepreneurship boot camp. Once selected, ReMADE students commit to an intensive, four-month business skills course taught by Stanford Law School and Stanford Graduate School of Business students and Silicon Valley business experts. Participants are expected to complete homework after every class, which covers general business knowledge, as well as specific applications for their business ideas. Furthermore, each participant is paired with one Stanford Law School student, one Graduate School of Business student, and one Silicon Valley executive mentor who assist the participating entrepreneur, one-on-one, in developing his or her written business plan. At the end of the course, program participants celebrate their graduation from the program at a completion ceremony that includes the opportunity to pitch their business ideas to a panel of Bay Area microenterprise development professionals who can provide participants with constructive feedback and tangible guidance as to the next steps to obtain funding and launch their businesses.
One critical challenge facing the formerly incarcerated is that, even if they apply for hundreds of jobs, many employers will refuse to hire those that have negative elements of their past. We firmly believe that there is another choice for those in that difficult position: where no good options exist, to create new opportunities. Even a modestly successful business may have a course-altering impact on a participant’s future.
At our best, Project ReMADE connects our stakeholders’ advantages with a group of aspiring business people to provide the support they need at various roadblocks in their process of creating a business. This contribution is priceless: it plants seeds of income for an individual and their family, as well as supplies a growth asset to the wider community. As one current student described it, his pathway to starting his own business stems from a deep desire to "carve my own path [and] define my own life."
Empowering the formerly incarcerated through entrepreneurship.
