By Rina Risper
The New Citizens Press
LANSING, MI — Capital City Community Action Network (CCCAN) and The New Citizens Press joined forces with Everybody Reads Bookstore located at 2019 E. Michigan Avenue (Next to Gone Wired) and just completed a month long book drive for prisoners.
Most prisons don’t have libraries with an adequate amount of reading material for inmates. The prison systems have also dramatically reduced their educational programs that give inmates an opportunity to read.
After unpacking and sorting Mount Hope Church’s Prison Ministries outreach program received almost 1,500 pieces of materials from the book drive.
In 2007, CCCAN and The New Citizens Press collected 5,000 books. The book drive last year lasted for 3 months. This year Len Hill, coordinator for Mount Hope Church’s Prison Ministries, only requested religious material and the overall success was evident even though the duration of the drive was for one month.
Len Hill said, “Thank you so very much. We are thrilled, honored and so grateful. Words fail me to express our joy. We are delivering material to four facilities this weekend for a total of 15 boxes. Wow, without precious helps like yours, we could not accomplish this.”
The Capital Area District Library has helped out for the past 2 years on this project. Sally Holliday, Book Burrow manager, gathered 125 books in 2008.
Since the last book was collected in June 2008, Mr. Hill and his cadre of volunteers have prepared and packaged books to ship to prisons across the country.
Mr. Hill said, “We shipped materials to three prisons recently with Muskegon being one and the other locations being in California at women’s prisons. Most of our material stays here in Michigan.”
Recently, Mr. Hill visited the women’s prison at the Huron Valley Complex and delivered 6 cases of books.
Scott Harris, owner of Everybody Reads bookstore said that it’s this type of community outpouring that makes the power of giving important. Mr. Scott has been integral in supporting grassroots initiatives. The mission states: “Everybody Reads exists to empower underrepresented individuals and families in the tri-county area through a comprehensive community bookstore and neighborhood resource center.”
Mr. Hill and Mr. Scott recently spoke about building a program to make hand drawn greeting cards of inmates available to the public.
The New Citizens Press has been the coordinator of the book drive for the last 2 years. It has been exciting partnering with CCCAN and Everybody Reads. Next year, The New Citizens Press will be working directly with Everybody Reads and Mount Hope Ministries to make sure that prison libraries have reading material from the Lansing area.
Mr. Hill meets with the National Lifers Association every month at Michigan Reformatory in Ionia.
Everybody Reads is open from Monday through Saturday 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. and Sunday, 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
