La Salle’s Circle K is known for taking trips to the PSPCA and its community service on campus, but few know about their newest service trip to Books Through Bars in South Philly. Books Through Bars is a nonprofit organization on the East Coast, dedicated to sending donated books to incarcerated people in Pennsylvania and the six surrounding states. According to their website, Books Through Bars sends about 2,100 books to about 700 incarcerated people in Pennsylvania and the surrounding areas every month. In addition to their main mission, Books Through Bars also supplements prison libraries, holds service-learning sessions with local organizations, and creates exhibits of prisoner artwork. At Books Through Bars, students read letters from incarcerated people requesting books of a certain type or topic. After they read it over, students can browse through almost two floors of organized bookshelves and find books that best fit the person’s requests.
Books Through Bars began with an employee of New Society Publishers, a small publishing company in Philadelphia. After receiving a letter from an incarcerated man asking for overstock or damaged books, this employee, Todd, began setting aside more and more overstock and unsold books as he got more and more letters from incarcerated people. Seeing their desire to learn and participate in life outside the prison walls, Todd got his coworkers involved in reading letters and sending books and reserved a permanent spot in a community recreational space in South Philly. This space now holds the library of donated books, as well as stations for volunteers to select, prepare, and package them for sending. If you’re looking for a way to make a small difference that could mean the world to one person, join Circle K and sign up for the next trip. The shuttle meets every Tuesday afternoon at 3:20pm next to Blue and Gold dining hall and returns around 6pm in time for night class.
Consider taking a free afternoon to do some good and have some fun doing it. You never know whose life you might profoundly affect.