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Unlocked Minds Program Update 06/02/02
Each week we receive requests from people who want to get connected with others. Sometimes these requests are from prisoners or family members looking for resources available to self-educating prisoners; sometimes the requests are from action-oriented individuals looking to get involved with or start a prisoner education or prison activist project in their area; and others are from people who are hoping to donate books or other resources to organizations committed to prisoner education and support. The Unlocked Minds program continues to facilitate such connections. To continue to do this well, you need to tell us about the work in which you are involved!
In addition to this work, we decided that we could use our newly-acquired non-profit status to fiscally sponsor prisoner-education organizations. So far we've sent out some letters to prisoners who are already involved in self-education and organizing projects in an effort to measure their interest in such a service.
Our most ambitious project is a collaborative effort between the Self-Education Foundation, Books Through Bars (a prison book program in Philadelphia) and New City Press (a Philadelphia-focused community writing and publishing partnership). In the near future, two local poets (including BUILD's Taina del Valle) will begin conducting writing workshops in a Philadelphia women's correctional facility. With the work created in the workshops, New City Press with SEF will publish an anthology of writing by women incarcerated in Philadelphia. The anthology will also feature a section dedicated to helping imprisoned women to develop creative writing programs without enjoying the benefit of outside facilitators. Roughly half of the books will be sold in order to raise money to sustain the writing workshop project. The remaining books will be distributed, at no cost, to individual women prisoners as well as women's prison libraries nation-wide.
--Nicole Meyenberg
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