Empowering women through reading
St. Thomas University students donate over 250 books to the Nova Institute
TRURO — Youth justice students at St. Thomas University (STU) in Fredericton were recently given an assignment they hope will help young, incarcerated women in Truro.
Last fall, students brought in more than 250 books to be donated to the Nova Institute, which is one of only five prisons across the country exclusive to women.
The initiative is part of Dr. Susan Reid’s youth justice class. She has worked alongside jails and prisons for several years with a group called Youth Matters, which aims to provide support to youth in custody.
Youth Matters was invited to the Nova Institute last summer.
“It’s a women-led, womensupported group, where we provide support in the form of coffee and materials,” said Reid. “We might make some pamphlets and things for them, but the women themselves figure out what they want to explore.”
With feedback from the women, they decided to explore empowerment with them through activities and sessions over the summer. When the fall rolled around, Reid began teaching a youth justice course at STU.
“I was teaching in the fall semester, my class on youth justice, and I thought this was a golden opportunity for my students to have an experiential opportunity,” said Reid.
“Not a lot of people are doing work in the area around emerging adults, and myself
and a few other experts across Canada have really taken this on as something that we believe is important. To look at alternatives to federal custody for this emerging adult group, or at least programming for that particular age group.”
Reid gave her students an assignment to put themselves in the shoes of the incarcerated youth, asking them — if they were in a similar situation, with limited access to the outside world, what would they read?
Students were also instructed to come up with activities surrounding the books they chose, so even those with low literacy would be able to participate.
“No embarrassment, no notion of ‘no, you can’t.’ It’s always from a strength-based approach,” Reid commented.
Meghan Maceachern, a Truro resident and STU alumnus, works alongside Reid with Youth Matters. She spoke of the women’s response.
“Some of the feedback was just fantastic,” said Maceachern. “That someone is thinking of them in that way, especially a fellow young person, who just found themselves on a different path in life and is at St. Thomas.”
READING FOR SELF-IMPROVEMENT
Reid was a little uncertain at first about what some of her students had picked for books to donate.
“The books from the young people … I was shocked at the beginning. I tried to be the mom and put the hand on the hip and say, ‘stop thinking you have to help them. They’re no different — you’re the same age. Stop buying them selfhelp books.’”
However, the students had made an argument in response— these were books the students had read themselves, with many quotes about self-improvement and selfempowerment that worked for them.
“I can’t argue with that,” said Reid.
One of the most surprising donations for Reid was from a group of men who, she admits, she didn’t have the highest of hopes for.
“They were amazing,” said Reid. “They got all these cookbooks that their moms had sent them for first-year university and donated them. It was like, one-pot-wonders, and how to cook on a budget. They made little recipe sheets for those that worked and those that didn’t, with the view that then there would be this Nova cookbook of greatest hits.
“That’s such great thinking. So 'out of the box' and from the heart. I was very excited to see them do that kind of work.”
Maceachern explained the books go a long way in teaching women about empowerment. A group of readers with the university help find quotes they believe fit the theme, which are then used during workshops.
“For one of our workshops, where we talked about empowerment, we wanted the women to define that, and come up with other words that make them think of empowerment. One of them was independent.
“One of the quotes that someone working on the book project found was, ‘isn’t it weird being your own role model?’ And we thought that is a great quote. Let’s talk about that. That’s a way of looking inward to find your own strengths in that kind of lens of interpreting empowerment.
“That’s the utility of this book team. They’re scanning not only for a view of what they’re finding interesting and helpful but also with a peer lens.”
The program was an important learning experience for students, many of who have aspirations with the RCMP, said Maceachern.
“For many students, especially after COVID, an opportunity to do anything with experiential learning, anything that is applied and has an impact on real people, is incredibly valuable for them at this point in their academic careers,” said Maceachern
“They’re approaching graduation, and some of them haven’t had the opportunity to connect to the community in a meaningful way. I think this was an opportunity that they could humanize a population that they will, very likely, end up working with or for, in some way.”
Reid noted that Correctional Service Canada deserves praise for allowing programming like theirs into federal institutions.
“As a public intellectual, I feel it’s my responsibility to criticize, constructively, but also to celebrate when things are going well. This is exactly what we ask for in terms of the literature on what works for this population.”