Meenakshi and I are going to donate books to prison to break isolation and improve education.

Today we started planning our project to donate books to prisons. Later we would email organizations that weren't available, so we emailed Mr. Daniska to donate through the DAC.

For advertising, we put the word out on social media for our drives and made announcements at the school. Our main avenue was printing color posters. We used some for the school (on Sep 28) and about 100 to put on the doors of our neighbors(on Sep 17)

Our collection in the neighborhood lasted two weeks(starting Sep 25th), while our school drive lasted one week(school rule, starting Oct 2 ). I put out bins and a poster board under an umbrella every day. (made the poster board on the 24th)

So in total we were able to collect 330 books, which I am very happy with. In order to donate more books we would have had to make the donation period longer and advertise to more neighborhoods. I think Meenakshi and I were able to reach our target demographic because the people who helped us unload books and Catherine talked to us about how taxes don't really cover books for prisoners, so they rely on donations. Incarcerated people have been reading the same books over and over again, so I knew we were going to impact the lives of people in prison who get to read something new and maybe learn some new things too. For how well we did, the advertising for the neighborhood went well and we reached our audience. In school, we could have done more advertising to promote our bin, like making more announcements to the school. Reflecting on what I know now, I wish Meenakshi and I could go back and research local facilities to learn more about them. That way we could have asked more questions about the prison system while dropping off our books and given the ladies we were donating to a preference of which location we wanted the books to go.