Wednesday, May 9th is GIVEBIG, a one-day online giving campaign to raise funds for local nonprofits. You can support Books to Prisoners by donating to our Paypal (below) or going to GIVEBIG’s website.
$25 sends packages of books to seven people $100 provides postage for an entire day of requests for books $500 provides dictionaries (our #1 request) to 100 incarcerated individuals
Why donate?
Incarcerated people face significant barriers to being able to access books. The United States continues to lock up millions of citizens without providing adequate support for prison education or prison libraries. In April 2016, one prison librarian in southern California reported a shortage of 20,000 books in the prison’s library due to budget cuts. And that’s the shortage at just one prison. This country currently runs more than 4,000 prisons.
Even in relatively well-funded prisons, many inmates are kept in solitary confinement or on “lockdown”, two common situations which prevent individuals from accessing the library for months on end. Unless mailed directly from an online vendor like Amazon, family members and friends are restricted from mailing books to their loved ones. Many families of prisoners are unable to purchase books to mail; some prisoners have been incarcerated so long that they no longer have connections to the outside.
The donation you make today will send books directly to somebody who is living behind bars.