INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Each week on Community Link, Carolene Mays takes a look at an organization or business that is making a positive impact on the community.

This week, Mays was joined by Dr. Michelle Danielle Jones, founder and executive director of Constructing Our Future, a reentry program to help women leaving prison.

Constructing Our Future was created from a public policy class at the Indiana Women’s Prison and is unanimously endorsed by the Indiana General Assembly, “It let us know that we could create a program and that our state would support us in bringing it into fruition,” Jones said.

There are 50,000 women coming home from prison and jails each year, and a lot of them are unhoused and end up reincarcerated, Jones said.

Jones researched the problems facing women leaving prison and said it was overwhelmingly issues with housing.

“Constructing Our Future provides a safe, welcoming environment for formerly incarcerated women to enter into and through working with other women who have lived experience, like myself and some of our staff, we help the women figure out and plan their route for reentry,” Jones said.

“They literally constructed their future,” she said.

To learn more about Constructing Our Future, watch the video above.