On October 24, Common Good Atlanta was honored with a Governor’s Award for the Arts and Humanities. The award recognizes “organizations that have made outstanding contributions to the civic or cultural vitality of the state.”   Common Good Atlanta is a grassroots nonprofit, co-founded by former Brittain Fellow Sarah Higinbotham, that bridges Georgia’s universities with Georgia’s prisons. More than 70 volunteer faculty from 9 Georgia colleges and universities collaborate with the Georgia Department of Corrections to offer accredited college courses inside 4 Georgia prisons, 4 days a week, for the last 11 years. Each year, the Georgia prison system asks the program to expand to more prisons – both men’s and women’s facilities – as the wardens and officers see the tangible benefits that education offers the prison environment. And each year, as Georgia's prisons release nearly 16,000 people back into Georgia's communities, more success stories emerge about transformed people impacting their neighborhoods for the common good.

Since 2014, the Writing and Communication Program has supported the program through Brittain Fellows teaching and tutoring inside the prisons, taking students to the prisons for combined classes, and hosting prison faculty training events in the Hall Building.