By Brittany Wouden, UX Lead

For justice-impacted learners, staying motivated is not a given. It’s a daily challenge and yet it’s one of the most important factors in building a future beyond incarceration. Motivation isn’t just about feeling inspired. It’s about sustaining effort toward long-term goals, like gaining new skills, earning credentials, and preparing for a career.

Motivation is the foundation for progress. Without it, even the most thoughtfully designed education and training tools fall flat. When motivation is built into the core of the learning experience and treated as essential, not extra, incarcerated students – whom we refer to as ‘learners’ – show up and stay engaged.

That is what led us to create Project Elevation—a daily point of connection designed to inspire reflection, foster self-belief, and sustain momentum. It’s not a traditional feature. It’s not tied to a lesson plan or assessment. Instead, it offers something far more essential: a moment to feel seen.

A sense of dignity and human connection is often the spark that drives progress. A simple act of recognition fuels self-belief, persistence, and purpose. Qualities that aren’t just meaningful, but necessary for workforce preparation and long-term success.

Designed for Impact: Built with Empathy

Project Elevation started as a question: What if we could offer a moment of encouragement that sees learners not as a label or a case file, but as individuals with potential and purpose? From that question came a daily practice that delivers consistent, human-centered touchpoints of inspiration and introspection that help learners feel recognized and reconnected to their sense of self.

That design choice wasn’t incidental. Project Elevation is purposefully structured to create the emotional conditions that make learning possible.

The drive to learn doesn’t begin with content. Motivation grows when people feel that their voices and futures matter. That’s why at the heart of Project Elevation is a commitment to engage authentically, not just deliver content. We build space for contemplation without forcing a particular outcome. It’s a small feature, but one that carries emotional weight. Because when something shows up for you every day, you start to believe you’re worth showing up for. 

What We’re Seeing: Real Stories, Real Shifts

Since launching Project Elevation over 5,000 learners have shared personal reflections that range from a single line of quiet determination to full paragraphs of raw, heartfelt insight. Engagement remains consistently high, with a large percentage of our daily active learners choosing to participate.

Across responses, one thing is clear: our learners are not passively waiting for change. They are actively building toward it. What we’re seeing is a collective willingness to reflect, grow, and keep going, even in the hardest moments.

When we asked, “What motivates you to keep going?” over 600 learners responded in a single day. Their motivations were grounded in love, hope, and resilience. One learner told us, “Wanting to show my children that this situation does not define me. I will overcome this, I will turn my mess into a message.” Another wrote, “Being free and being a better person. I want to make a difference, if not to anyone else, than to myself and see the good changes that have happened. I wanna be able to have positive things come from the negative things that happen to me and be a good impact on those around me. I wanna show love to my community and have love shown back to me.” Community, future goals, and self-determination consistently rise to the surface.

When asked how they would begin building toward their second chance, learners responded with a rhythm of growth: reflection, purpose, action. They described letting go of harmful patterns, examining their choices, showing up for their families, and committing to the daily work of becoming someone they could be proud of. Many were grounded in discipline, emotional maturity, and a growing sense of self-belief. One learner captured it simply: “I can be better today than I was yesterday and better tomorrow than I was today.”

The emotional clarity of these reflections isn’t just moving. It’s instructive. Self-reflection is more than a personal moment. It’s a mindset intervention. It reconnects people to their capacity to grow. For justice-impacted learners, that shift often determines whether they disengage or take the next step toward education, career preparation, and a different kind of future.

The stories and reflections don’t just inspire us. They inform us. Each response is a window into what learners care about, what challenges they’re navigating, and what motivates them to keep going. Over time, clear themes emerge. We see positive shifts in language around goal setting, more frequent mentions of career readiness, and a growing sense of personal agency. 

In a recent response set, nearly 25 percent of learners described taking concrete steps to build skills or prepare for life after release, including things like enrolling in programs, studying for exams, or mapping out job plans. One learner wrote: “There is a lot of things that I can do, but what I will do is start today by taking advantage of every educational and programming opportunity that is offered to me. I will apply every piece of knowledge to my everyday ventures. I will be more thankful and not resentful.” Additionally, 65 percent reflected on their personal journeys of growth. Many described building self-awareness, emotional regulation, and resilience. These internal shifts are not just meaningful; they are essential. For justice-impacted learners, personal transformation often lays the foundation for sustainable employment. 

Why It Matters: Motivation Drives Long-Term Success

Motivation isn’t a byproduct of personal and professional development. It is a prerequisite. As the UX Lead at Orijin, I design with the understanding that justice-impacted individuals face complex emotional and structural barriers. That means motivation can’t be treated as a side benefit or left to chance. It has to be built into the experience. By choosing to engage authentically with empathy and prioritize motivation from the start, we see deeper engagement, stronger skill-building, and lasting momentum. 

We also see clear signals that motivation connects directly to long-term success. Learners who reflect on growth, discipline, and resilience are often the same learners who articulate education goals, seek employment pathways, and prepare for workforce reentry with greater confidence. The personal growth they describe is not separate from career readiness. It helps make it possible.

At Orijin, we continue to evolve our learning platform with motivation at its center. This means focusing on tools that support personal growth and goal setting, strengthening features that foster family connection and healthy relationships, and enhancing personalized access to career and workforce readiness resources. It also means investing in emotional well-being, refining engagement strategies to meet learners where they are, and staying grounded in authentic learner feedback at every stage of development.

Our Philosophy in Action

Project Elevation is more than a feature. It is a reflection of who we are and how we build our solutions. We believe that real change happens when motivation is treated not as a feeling, but as a practice. That practice is built on empathy, reinforced by insight, and delivered through design. 

Motivation is human at its core. When learners feel valued, capable, and connected, they do more than show up. They move forward with purpose. That is the kind of momentum we are proud to build alongside them.