The Storybook Project, with Denise Chai and Gem Jones

Denise Chai is the outreach coordinator for The Storybook Project of Arkansas. From the website: “Our motto was - and is - ‘keeping families connected through reading,’ ” said project founder Pat Oplinger of Cherokee Village. She started Storybook in 1997 with a few other volunteers from a local church. The original purpose, she said, “was to raise the literacy level of both inmates and their children, thus raising education and self confidence levels and family unity.”

Gem (Undrea) Jones spent about two decades in prison, and she talks to us a little about what got her there, but mostly about what the Storybook Project meant to her during those years and beyond. Also, check out her Facebook page: What About Us? She gives voice to the voiceless.

Uppity Women is hosted by Stephanie Harris, founder of Women Lead Arkansas, a non-partisan nonprofit whose mission is to empower women and girls to engage in politics, policy, and leadership.

This podcast is meant to showcase women (and men!) doing cool things; be a place for hard conversations we need to have before we can make progress (race, politics, feminism, etc.); bring people together to figure sh!t out and get stuff done; and generally thumb our noses at anyone who would tell us what we may or may not do as women.

Women Lead Arkansas
darylshawn.bandcamp.com/music

Links:

The Storybook Project

What About Us?

DecARcerate

Sesame Street Communities