Sorting Books at the Prison Book Program

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Event Description:

The goals of the Prison Book Program are to encourage literacy, and support the prisoners' interest in this to the best of our ability through our resources and privileges as the un-incarcerated through filling their requests for books and other educational materials. Volunteers will read letters from prisoners, fill their book requests, and package the books to be shipped.

RSVP: https://onebrick.org/node/2343512

What we'll be doing:

Responding to prisoner requests for books: Picking, Invoicing and Packing - accounts for approximately 90% of the work we do during our volunteer sessions.

Volunteers must be able to do one of these jobs to volunteer:

- Pickers read a prisoner’s hand-written request and find appropriate books in the book inventory. High school-level reading skills and a love of books are all you need to do this job.

- Invoicers make sure that the chosen books are appropriate and do not contain any forbidden items. If they are good to go, they fill out an invoice. People who can read at least at the high school-level, have legible handwriting and good attention to detail are great candidates for this job.

- Packers prepare the books for mailing. They wrap the books in brown paper and address the package.

Other tasks: Occasionally volunteers help with other tasks such as processing book donations and incoming mail.

RSVP: https://onebrick.org/node/2343512 What you should know:

The Prison Book Program Core Members will provide a volunteer orientation for new volunteers, which will include training in the tasks to be completed for that shift. Cleanup begins at 8:45 p.m. and the volunteer event concludes at 9 p.m.

NOTE: Unfortunately this event is not wheelchair accessible. We do our best to ensure as many events as possible are accessible. The nonprofit can accommodate volunteers who can do light lifting, counting, and sorting. If you have specific questions in this area, please contact the event manager.