Youth Civic Engagement Scholarship

I started Free Words Prison, an organization that collects and distributes books to prisoners, to cope with the loneliness of COVID-19. Not just my loneliness, but the loneliness of one of the isolated populations in the U.S.: incarcerated people. I had been watching reports from prison facilities across the U.S. and saw a common pattern: mental health and suicide rates were at an all-time high, educational programs had come to a halt, no visitors were allowed, many prisoners were getting COVID-19, and others were put in solitary confinement to keep COVID-19 from spreading. As I researched the U.S. prison population, I learned about the disproportionate racial demographics and how privately owned prisons profit from high rates of incarceration. This fueled my work with Free Words Prison. Within a year, I had created an organization, partnered with local bookstores and authors, and held book drives. So far, Free Words Prison has delivered over 16,000 books to prisons and juvenile detention centers across Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. I began receiving requests and letters from incarcerated people, telling me how grateful they were for the books. They also told me that most books in prison libraries were inadequate; many books were on outdated U.S. history, Christianity, from the 1950s–80s, and there were almost no books by or about people of color. As I work on growing Free Words Prison, I am inspired to work with other prison advocacy groups to help bring about justice in different ways and support other organizations like mine. Last year, I started interning for The Liberation Foundation, where I created resources for workshops to help incarcerated people smoothly reenter society with the resources they need to do well. I was able to meet many people who were determined to turn their lives around, and those people inspired me to expand my work. By interning for the organization Let’s Get Free, I sought to shed light on incarcerated women’s voices through magazine publications and art auctions. I was able to focus on learning about the unique experience women face within prison facilities and how they tend to be much more underfunded compared to male prison facilities. I was able to help create a monthly magazine that sends monthly copies to women's prison facilities to provide them with helpful resources and relatable stories. Through the League of Women Voters, I was able to help people in Washington, D.C. correctional facilities register to vote. For Prison Radio, I created monthly newsletters and edited podcast episodes that raised donations for prison reform organizations. These organizations have put my future into focus. I want to be a catalyst for change within the criminal justice system and a strong advocate for prison reform.. Books were very helpful during the pandemic for me, and starting Free Words Prison cured my loneliness, as I hope it does for others.