Wendy Hinshaw for Exchange for Change

I'm so excited to be a champion for Exchange for Change this Give Miami Day, and I want to tell you why.

Almost everyone in prison comes home one day. But while they're inside, very few are given a real chance to grow. Exchange for Change changes that. Since 2014, they've been bringing college-level courses into prisons and jails across South Florida. Every week, their facilitators go through security and into a place most people never enter, because they believe the students waiting inside are worth showing up for. More than 700 students a year, in eight facilities.

That matters more than it might sound. Someone shows up for these students, week after week, and expects something of them. For a lot of them, it's the first time in years that anyone has looked at them and seen someone capable of more. That changes people, and the research says so plainly: education inside makes someone 43 percent less likely to return to prison.

It goes both ways, too. More than 3,000 people from our community have sat in one of those classrooms through Prison Visits for Change, and almost nobody walks out the same. Your gift goes straight into those classrooms, into books, materials, and teachers, for people who have almost no other way to get them.

Will you join me today in supporting Exchange for Change? Every person deserves the chance to become who they could be.