It's Pitt Day of Giving today — a 24 hour opportunity to support your Pitt organizations of choice through fundraising. Any gift of $5 or more makes a big difference and helps sustain the research, education, and community work that we do here at the Center on Race and Social Problems.
To show you what that looks like in action, we sat down with CRSP Program Manager Milencia Saintus who leads "Bridging Stories and Action", an initiative that mobilizes campus and community volunteers to pack and donate books to incarcerated individuals, addressing educational inequity and supporting rehabilitation across Pennsylvania. Learn more about the work Milencia does below and thank you for supporting CRSP this Pitt Day of Giving!
Q&A with Milencia Saintus:
Q: Can you describe what Bridging Stories and Action does in your own words. What does a typical volunteer event look like?
A: Bridging Stories and Action connects two things that matter deeply: books and people who need them. I partner with the Pittsburgh Prison Book Project to sponsor and host volunteer packing sessions where community members come together, read through handwritten letters from people who are incarcerated, and carefully select and pack the books they've requested—then ship them directly to them. A typical session runs about two hours on a weekend morning. You walk in and then you pick up a letter that is written by a real person asking for something specific. Maybe they want a Spanish-language dictionary, maybe something on history, or maybe just a novel to get lost in—and you find it, pack it, and then help send it off. It's a quiet but very meaningful work. By the end of two hours there's a stack of boxes that are ready to go and somewhere down the line, someone receives something they asked for.
Q: What drew you to this initiative personally, and has there been a moment or story that's really stuck with you?
A: I have wanted to volunteer with the Pittsburgh Prison Book Project for a long time because the work that they do is truly amazing. However, every time I tried to sign up to volunteer, the sessions were completely full. This made me think—if I'm having this much trouble getting in, other people must be too and that made me want to see if I could find a way to help. So I looked into sponsoring a session and found a path through applying for and thankfully receiving a grant through the Office for Institutional Engagement & Wellbeing's Discourse and Dialogue initiative. From there, I have been able to build something around it. I also wanted this to feel like more than just showing up, so I paired the packing sessions with copies of Are Prisons Obsolete? to give volunteers context and language for the work they were doing. The moment that's stayed with me is honestly hearing people say they finally felt like they could do something. So many folks in our CRSP and RECI communities want to be more involved but don't know how to start. Watching someone pack their first box and realize how simple and direct the impact is—that never gets old.
Q: What does access to books actually mean for someone who is incarcerated. What kind of difference can it make?
A: When your physical world is reduced to a cell and a schedule you didn't choose, a book is one of the few things that can genuinely expand it. Books are access to education, to language, to professional skills, to stories that reflect your own life back at you, and to worlds entirely different from the one you're in. For many people who are incarcerated, the prison library is limited and purchasing books isn't financially realistic. A handwritten letter requesting a specific book is an act of hope. This means that someone is still reaching, learning, and investing in themselves despite their circumstances. When we respond to that letter, we're saying: your mind matters. Your growth matters. You are not forgotten.
Q: What would more support allow Bridging Stories and Action to do that it can't do right now?
A: Right now, this initiative exists because of a single grant and that's both a gift and a vulnerability. The funding has allowed us to sponsor session and provide books for context and conversation. I hold these sessions on weekends so that people who work during the week or face childcare challenges can still participate. But grants end. Without continued support, we lose the ability to keep sponsoring these sessions for our Pitt and Pittsburgh communities. More support would mean more sessions, more volunteers who get to experience this work, and most importantly—more letters answered. There are people writing right now asking for books. Every session we can fund is a direct response to that ask. This community has shown it wants to show up. We just need the resources to keep the door open.