Please help us keep our four weekly

prison workshops going year-round!!

Free issue of Voices with any
contribution of $100 or more

to donate, click here!

A few weeks ago we celebrated the sixth anniversary of our prison program, bringing together women and adolescent girls incarcerated in Riverhead and Yaphank Correctional Facilities. We hope that you had an opportunity to view this celebration, aired on NBC news on Friday June 25th at 11pm. To view the link on NBC's website, click here. (You may need to close and click the link once or twice, but do be patient. It will come on.)

Our newest group-- our incarcerated teens ranging from the ages of 16 to 21-- stole the show. We just learned that the total funding for the coming fiscal year for this and our group at Yaphank, provided by Eastern Suffolk BOCES, will only cover a school month during the summer and part of the school year to come. They have been very generous with us, in support of our programs, considering their own drastic cuts, so this is the best they can do.

 

This is why we need your help. While young people on the outside welcome school breaks, for our incarcerated teens and older women on the tiers, Herstory's weekly writing workshops become a lifeline, shaping the rest of the week when so many are quietly writing in their cells and beginning to think about new life choices, knowing that they will be given a listening ear and new guidance each week.

 

Our two six-year-old women's groups in the jail in Riverside are coming to the end of this year's available funding as well. There rival gang members write side-by-side, finding new community and hope, while mothers and daughters, sisters, grandmothers and aunts-- forbidden to touch one another when they pass in the halls-- through the Herstory process learn one another's stories for the first time-- breaking through cycles of family violence and abuse.

 

Please donate to help us continue all of our workshops for incarcerated women, without having to break to wait for new funding opportunities. All contributions are 100% tax deductible! To make a donation, click here.