Friends Outside Lend a Hand to Those from the Inside

By Emily Farver, VIP Fellow at Friends Outside and Jennifer Harman, VIP Leader at the Volunteer Center of Santa Cruz

The Volunteer Center of Santa Cruz has 18 programs that empower young people, families, seniors, working professionals, and people with disabilities to be the difference in their community. Each year the Volunteer Center collaborates with over 500 partners, including fellow non-profits and businesses, to ensure our community organizations have the capacity to recruit and welcome new volunteers. AmeriCorps VIP Fellows are partnered through the Volunteer Center of Santa Cruz County with local non-profits to help develop volunteer programs, bringing resources to children and families within Santa Cruz County.

One of these programs is Friends Outside, where Emily Farver is the VIP Fellow this term.


The re-entry process for our clients is a difficult transition, exacerbated by little to
no support from the community.  Friends Outside acts as an advocate and resource referral service to support individuals who are incarcerated or have recently been released.

Our organization has noted that many post- released clients confront boredom, which is a primary factor that increases their likelihood to get rearrested.  Many clients have a challenging time obtaining employment, figuring out housing, and creating a healthy social network.  Due to these difficulties, Friends Outside needed to expand our programs to provide participants free courses on life skills to integrate into their daily interactions.

The development of the Life Skills Workshops has been most successful by involving staff, volunteers, and our clientele in the process.  As a result, we have built a program that reaches out to individuals in need and is taught solely by volunteers from our community who are professionals in their fields or have a strong passion for the topic. With the addition of this service, we have engaged a whole new set of volunteers into our organization.  Thus far, we have held four classes, from Financial Aid Assistance instructed by an advisor at Cabrillo College to Stress Reduction and Time Management taught by a licensed Social Worker (LMSW).  These classes have had a high rate of client attendance and have been well-received.