Our mission is to end generational poverty and recidivism.
FreeWorld gets formerly incarcerated people into high-wage jobs to thrive on their own terms. With a newfound sense of stability, prison remains a memory for FreeWorld graduates.
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67.8%
Number of released prisoners are rearrested within three years of release
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18-20
Average number of requirements that people on probation must comply with per day, or face rearrest
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27%
Unemployment rate among formerly incarcerated people
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25%
Percent of formerly incarcerated people without a high school diploma, GED, or college degree
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49%
Percent of people with 2 or more arrests per year who are unemployed
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Poverty
The strongest predictor for recidivism [1]
The U.S. has a problem with mass incarceration.
Our country has only five percent of the world’s population — yet incarcerates 25% of the world’s prisoners, incarcerating at a rate 4 to 7 times higher than other Western nations. This corrections system impacts American taxpayers over $80 billion per year. And with over two million people behind bars, the U.S. has the highest total prison population in the world. [2]
But recidivism is an even larger problem.
Recidivism has come to be known as “the revolving door” in and out of prisons. While the national crime rate and total number of prisoners has declined, the percentage of new crimes committed by individuals released from prison has been increasing.
FreeWorld aims to eliminate recidivism altogether.
With an expansive curriculum, job placement services, and an enthusiastic community, FreeWorld gets formerly incarcerated people into high-wage jobs to thrive on their own terms. With a newfound sense of stability, prison remains a memory for FreeWorld graduates.
"I went to prison on a 15-year sentence at the age of 17. After I was released, I spent two years going from temp job to temp job. I felt lost... None of these jobs was a career and I couldn't earn enough to get on my feet. My parole officer told me about FreeWorld. It sounded too good to be true, but I decided that I had nothing to lose by giving it a shot. I'm now the happiest I've ever been! I'm in a career that will allow me to provide for my family and take care of my baby girl."
ANDREW J.
How it started
Matt Mochary is an entrepreneur, filmmaker, investor, and CEO Coach to some of Silicon Valley’s biggest unicorn companies. Two of Matt’s award-winning films were Favela Rising and The Gloves, which were shot in the slums of Brazil and New York. In making these films, Matt came to a sudden realization; the people in these slums were stuck in generational cycles of poverty and therefore turned to crime to provide for their families. Once they were arrested and released, their criminal record prevented them from finding living wage employment, so the cycle would continue.
This stuck with Matt and over the next 10 years, he worked with returning citizens to fund their education into vocational trades, where they would have a better chance of finding employment that paid living wages. Over time, he realized that the trucking industry consistently hired the people he funded. He shared this with his close friend, Jason Green, the Founding Partner at Emergence Capital. Jason grew excited and encouraged Matt to scale this effort nationwide. Jason and Matt recruited Andy Bromberg to join this project and conducted a CEO search.
That’s when they found Jason Wang. The rest is history!
