The idea for education awards started during a participatory health research project inside a BC provincial correctional centre for women. During the research project, incarcerated women gave voice to their goals for improving health, including their goal to engage in meaningful education. One incarcerated woman said, “They should sentence us to education!” In 2008, women released into the community formed a network comprised of formerly incarcerated women and their families, and volunteers and academics, with the aim of furthering the emotional, physical, mental and spiritual healing of women inside and outside prison through participatory research processes. An education fund was created to provide financial support to empower women’s education and that of their children. The Women’s Health Research Institute and BC Women’s Hospital, initially hosted the education fund until 2017 when the Arresting Hope Education Fund was created with the Vancouver Foundation. Net proceeds from book sales of ‘Arresting Hope’ (Inanna, 2014 http://www.inanna.ca/catalog/arresting-hope-women-taking action-prison-health-inside-out/), and ‘Releasing Hope’ (Inanna, 2019 https://www.inanna.ca/product/releasing-hope-stories-of transition-from-prison-to-community/) are being donated to the Arresting Hope Education Fund. An awards adjudication committee, hosted at the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology, British Columbia’s Indigenous public post-secondary Institute, administers the education awards. Application form: https://www.nvit.ca/docs/arresting_hope_bursary_application.pdf