Allan Hancock College’s BIGE Club receives $10K grant from The Fund for Santa Barbara

SANTA MARIA, Calif. - Allan Hancock College’s Beyond Incarceration Greater Education (BIGE) Club was recently awarded a $10,000 grant from The Fund for Santa Barbara.

BIGE is an on-campus club and support network for formerly incarcerated students at Hancock. The club is a space for students to share their experiences, find college resources and find a sense of community while at school.

The college said the grant money will be used for outreach programs to local at-risk youth and to help newly-released students who are coming out of incarceration afford to earn a degree or certificate at Hancock.

“I am humbled and grateful to The Fund for Santa Barbara for awarding us this grant, which will be used to help individuals who are seeking a second chance at life through higher education,” said BIGE Club President and co-founder Arturo Raygoza. “It will also allow us to help educate our community and break the stigma and negative stereotypes about formerly incarcerated individuals.”

These outreach plans aim to keep individuals away from the criminal justice system and instead point them toward the education system.

“We hope to stop them from thinking they only have a narrow avenue of choices and show them they actually have an entire world of careers and education within reach,” said Raygoza. “We are trying to catch them before they get too deeply into trouble, or back into trouble, and provide paths to success.”

Some of the grant dollars will also be used to provide emergency funds to help formerly incarcerated students pay for textbooks, transportation, food and other financial burdens that could interfere with their college and career aspirations.