Got our first inmate to finish a GED in the library program I started

Last Tuesday I was sitting in the visiting room at our county jail in Mobile when one of the guys came up to me with this crumpled paper in his hand. He was shaking a little and said "I passed the math section on my third try." I started the library literacy thing six months ago with zero budget, just some old textbooks from the public library and a dry erase board I found in storage. The jail staff kept telling me nobody would stick with it because the noise from the pod makes it hard to focus. We had to move our sessions to the chapel because the guards kept walking through our space. But this guy studied every Tuesday and Thursday for 18 weeks straight even after I caught him using his meal tray as a desk. Now he has a certificate and he's already talking about taking college classes after he gets out. Have any of you dealt with getting books into facilities that ban anything with a spine?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_terry6d ago

What about getting local churches to sponsor book donations as community outreach?

the_thomas6d ago

Man, as someone who has been guilted into buying way too many fundraising discount cards at church potlucks (my wallet still hasn't fully recovered), I get the concern about strings attached. But maybe a simple book drop box in the lobby with no sermon required could work, like the one my old church had that mostly collected worn-out copies of "Left Behind" and a few stray cookbooks. Local faith groups can be surprisingly chill if you just ask them to stick to the basics, no pamphlets tucked inside the covers or anything. I'd rather see a kid get a mildly preachy picture book than no book at all, you know? Long as nobody's handing out tracts with the Dr. Seuss, it might actually do some good.

roberts.leo6d ago

Huh @the_terry I dunno, churches pushing books might come with strings attached that don't help everyone.