Youth-led book drive looking for community donations to give to correctional facilities

Bright Pages has been trying to gather books to donate to correctional facilities across the country since 2022.

Typically, the youth-led non-profit organization receives the books from sponsors, but they wanted to host an event to get the community more involved.

The President, Feiyang Luo, is also a Student Trustee for the Waterloo Region District School Board. Luo founded Bright Pages alongside Anthony Li. There is no limit to what kind of book people can donate, said Luo, just no hard-covered copies.

“To have a more equitable world and have a more inclusive world, it does require everybody to have access to education and have that right to it,” he said in an interview with CityNews Kitchener. “The overwhelmingly large majority of correctional facilities in Canada are filled with people who were unable to graduate high school.”

The book drive looks to bring awareness to what Bright Pages does and get more books into the hands of people at correctional facilities.

The community is invited to rummage through their bookshelves and donate to the cause. The event will run from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, March 29, at the Country Hills Kitchener Public Library, located at 1500 Block Line Rd. in Kitchener.

“For the Stratford Jail, the inmates directly write to us, and they often request novels, for example, Percy Jackson, NYPD Blue and for North Bay, the people who work at the correctional facility have specifically requested textbooks,” said Luo.

When Bright Pages first started many people were confused as to the purpose because they didn’t think the books would be read by inmates, Luo said, adding that education hasn’t been heavily emphasized.

Some of the inmates have written letters to the young volunteers, thanking them for the books they have received.

“One AMA at the Stratford Jail wrote to me ‘The books take our minds beyond where we are’ and I thought that was a very powerful message,” said Luo.