Reading in Prison: The Book as a Bridge to Family and a Life with no Bars

In 2011, in cooperation with penitentiary institutions in Poland, our Foundation started
an important and wide-spread program called “Reading in Prison: The Book as a Bridge to Family and a Life with no Bars". Visiting rooms in over 130 prisons have been enhanced with kids’ corners equipped with books supplied by the Foundation.

The aim of the project is to encourage incarcerated parents to read to their children. During family visits in jail, inmates often have difficulties talking to and establishing close relationships with their youngsters  Reading to a child is a great way to forge a bond with him or her, facilitate prisoner’s  rehabilitation process and build better relationships within a family. For children from dysfunctional families, it is often the first contact with a book and many of them want to take the book home. Therefore there is a need to deliver new children’s books to prisons regularly.

Volunteers involved in the project are also reading to and playing with children thus giving adult family members the opportunity to talk more privately without children’s immediate presence. 

As part of the project, educational conferences on the importance of reading to children and fulfilling their emotional needs are being conducted by Foundation’s lecturers for staff members of penitentiary institutions. Soon, the conferences will be also conducted for inmates. Prison libraries are provided with books for adult readers by the National Library as well as some publishing houses which were invited to the project by the Foundation. Additionally, training for prison’s librarians will start in the near future.