We’re pleased to be able to announce that we’re going to be working with The Shannon Trust to develop a series of films to promote their Toe By Toe literacy scheme.
The Shannon Trust is a charity devoted to the development of literacy in our prisons through peer to peer mentoring. The charity encourages and helps prisons to develop teams of inmates, who run daily one-on-one lessons for illiterate fellow prisoners.
Literacy in our prisons is an important issue, as explained by the Trust:
The government’s statistic is that 38% of all adult prisoners have no useful literacy skills. A further 29% have very poor reading skills. That equates to over 50,000 prisoners at any one time.
And it is a moving parade. The prison population is around 76,000 strong, but 90,000 inmates are released every year.
So there is a constant stream of people going through the system with very weak literacy. And all of them are currently almost barred from well paid and fulfilling employment.
We’ll be working closely with Trust volunteers, along with participants in the scheme, to produce two short films which will encourage wider participation, and to promote the efforts of the scheme so that it can be rolled out in more prisons and in the probation service.
This is a really worthwhile project which we’re proud to be involved with.
Posted by Phil Powell on December 10, 2007