Community Educational Outreach (CEO) is devoted to providing educational resources for people who are incarcerated or at-risk of being institutionalized. We offer our services to local community correction, drug rehabilitation, and community based facilities in the hope that clients will not return to their former lifestyle or go to prison. In addition, CEO is accessible to anyone in the community looking to obtain their GED. Founded in the '90s due to a lack of educational resources for these specific at-risk populations, CEO has tripled its student population and successes. We now serve just over 600 students a year!

Our curriculum has expanded to include not only GED services toall students but also provides Help, Information, and Resources for Employment (HIRE) and Strengthening Knowledge In Literacy and Life Skills (SKILLS) to those students currently involved within the criminal justice system.

Since the beginning, we have kept track of our students and their successes on long monthly spreadsheets. Due to our boot strap budget, we have struggled to keep our data together and in a format that we can use to show potential funders our growth and achievements. Recently we were offered a chance to purchase a database for $1,000 specifically tailored to programs like ours. This database would allow us to enter all student data from 2003 through 2007 to show our progressive growth, not to mention save the trees! We would then be able to demonstrate to our students, the community, and our funders exactly how their support, involvement, and efforts have made our program into something that is extremely worthwhile and effective in our community.