Entrepreneurship class offered to Charleston Co. inmates

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) – A class at the Al Cannon Detention Center is giving inmates the opportunity to design, and hopefully one day, launch their own businesses.

Stuart Williams is the founder of In Place Impact. Just over a year ago, he teamed up with the nonprofit Alliance for Community Collaboration which aims to reduce gun violence and crime through education.

Together, they implemented an “impact entrepreneurship” class at the jail. Williams designed the course himself and teaches it to the inmates every Wednesday.

“I started teaching and I realized that the people that faced the problems, are actually the ones that often have the solutions,” Williams told News 2.

As part of the curriculum, inmates create their own for-profit company with a socioeconomic or environmental impact.

“A totally organic cleaning service, a totally organic career service, an organic food truck,” Williams said as he listed examples of the types of businesses the students have come up with.

On top of the business models, the class has also created an alternative sentencing program called Elite Transitions. Williams explained the program would give inmates access to services while they’re in the system and prepare them for the transition out.

Students presented their work on Wednesday to area leaders.

“It is so uplifting to see what they’re learning, to see how they know they can make a difference for people coming behind them,” said Sandy Tecklenburg, the City of Charleston’s First Lady.

Williams said he hopes to expand this program throughout the South Carolina and the United States.