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If you love books, perhaps you donate the ones you’ve read to a worthy cause. Here’s one you might not have heard of — the Prison Book Program.
Winchester resident Judy Doctoroff is a new member of the Prison Book Program board and would be happy to get your books to incarcerated folks both locally and around the country.
Doctoroff moved to Winchester five years ago with her husband, Jim O’Neill, and was looking for a place to volunteer. She was familiar with the prison population from reporting for a PBS program, “Rikers: An American Jail.”
“I wanted to provide a deeper level of service,” she said.
Doctoroff discovered the organization provides, “an amazing volunteer experience. It’s well-focused work and the volunteers are friendly and committed.”
The program was formed in Quincy nearly 50 years ago and matches books to requests from prisoners, most of which can be done with donated books. But 3,000 of them wanted dictionaries, Doctoroff says, and the program also asks for financial donations to buy them.
While the prisoners often ask for novels, they also ask for books that help them “engage with the outside world,” says Doctoroff.
One prisoner wanted to help his daughter with her job search, and others ask for self-help and GED prep books, plus books on how to start a company, how to exercise, and language books.
The theory, says Doctoroff, “is to educate and inspire and to promote rehabilitation through books.”
“Volunteers can help in different ways,” Doctoroff explains. “Opening the request letters, sorting the books, finding books that match the requests, writing notes to go with the books, or shipping them.”
Through this week, Doctoroff says, the Hull Family Foundation will match the cost of purchases from PBP’s eight indie bookstore wish lists. The impact of donations will be doubled when people shop at any of the eight indie wish lists linked on PBP’s home page.
Twice a month, Doctoroff and her husband go to Quincy’s “Church of the Presidents,” where O’Neill finds the books and Doctoroff does paperwork to support the program.
According to Doctoroff, the organization shipped 20,000 packages of books this year.
Doctoroff used to run Bill Moyers’s video company and nowadays she helps train writers to cover climate news.
If you’d like to donate books or funds, send an email to editor@winchesternews.org and you’ll be put in touch with Doctoroff.
