Building Opportunities for Self Sufficiency (BOSS) is able to reunite parents exiting incarceration and their children to help families heal and create a stable life together.
"The grant from Episcopal Impact Fund helped us keep our commitment to families during the COVID-19 pandemic. BOSS staff try to contact people every day. They don't give up, and they don't let families give up."– Donald Frazier, Executive Director, BOSS
The mission of BOSS is to help poor, homeless and disabled people achieve health and self-sufficiency, and to fight the root causes of poverty and homelessness. Over half of BOSS's work is with formerly incarcerated or justice involved individuals, and many of them are parents.
The formerly incarcerated have many barriers to safely reuniting with their families—lack of stable housing, no income, sometimes addiction, post-traumatic stress disorder and mental illness. BOSS’s Reentry Services address all these needs by providing shelter and housing assistance, education and employment, mental health referrals, peer support, violence prevention, and community healing services for formerly incarcerated people and their families.
BOSS’s newest program is a transitional supportive housing program in Oakland for formerly incarcerated women and their children that will put these families on the path to healing and self-sufficiency. Episcopal Impact Fund’s grant will help defray the costs of this program.