We’re now halfway through the Summer Readathon that Not About The Buildings* organized for the local chapter of Books Through Bars. The miserable weather we’ve had has actually been ideal for the twenty-one volunteer readers, each of whom is raising money by sitting home with their nose in a book.
For every title they read between now and Labor Day, more money will go to shipping books to some of the two million people currently in the American prison system. In Rhode Island, prison libraries are required by law. (Not to say that the collections are great, or that they’re even staffed all the time. But still.) But in some states, privately-run jails don’t have libraries at all, making prison book programs like BTB really crucial.
Sponsoring is easy. Just go to the Not About The Buildings website, pick your favorite reader, and then decide how much you’d like to sponsor them for. Donations so far range from $.25 per book to $10 per book, so it’s not really that much of a financial commitment if you don’t want it to be. And all the money raised will go directly toward the cost of mailing books to prisoners.