DIAD’s Free Minds Book Club Events Double Down on Impact in 2021

Meredith Tierney Shields

The Junior League of Washington (JLW) programming has been universally impacted by the virtual environment demanded by COVID-19. For some JLW committees, this meant scaling back programming. However, for others, like Done-In-A-Day’s (DIAD) partnership volunteering with the Free Minds Book Club, this environment offered an opportunity to engage at an even higher level for volunteers and those they serve.

Free Minds is a nonprofit that works with incarcerated youth and adults in Washington, DC to provide confidence building and inspiration through the medium of poetry. In pre-COVID-19 times, Free Minds and DIAD would run what they call “Write Nights,” whereby Free Minds would collect poetry written by incarcerated youth - generally up to 25 poems per event - and share them with JLW. Then, DIAD members would meet at Loughborough House to review the poems and provide words of encouragement and feedback in the margins.

During this League year, however, meeting at the Loughborough House was not possible, so DIAD Committee Chair, Aida Latorre, had to get creative. The Free Minds Book Club devised a way to use an online platform to share the poems and allow volunteer groups like DIAD to provide feedback to the poems. A lot of hard work and the online platform Miro enabled JLW DIAD volunteers to do just that. Miro is an online whiteboard program that enables teams to share and then synthesize comments in real time. The DIAD Committee has been using Miro for its Write Nights where volunteers can read the poetry, write notes and comments about the same that are then synthesized and put into a readable and digestible format by the program coordinator to share with the youth authors.

“The benefit of this virtual environment is that we’ve had a lot of volunteers return to several Write Nights, which was atypical in pre-COVID-19 times. We’ve also been able to expand the program because we don’t have a space limitation on the online system - we haven’t had to cap volunteers at all,” described Latorre.

The Free Minds organization has also been impressed with the DIAD Committee’s ability to nimbly change course in order to keep the program going and the impact high.

“Junior League has been our most responsive volunteer group during this pandemic. Done-In-A-Day has been so incredibly responsive to the needs of our members,” remarked the Free Minds Book Club Coordinator.

Likewise, one of the Free Minds Poet Ambassadors, who is a formerly-incarcerated youth now serving in mentoring roles with Free Minds, described his experience with Free Minds Write Nights like this:

“Writing is a form of therapy. It’s important to write down our goals and dreams. Free Minds captivated me because I felt like someone cared to listen to what I had to say. Now that I’m out, I get to go to schools and speak to students. I never thought I would be in a position where people would listen to what I had to say. Free Minds does incredible things - they sowed the seeds to help people out but I don’t think they realized how big it would be.”

In addition, JLW members who have volunteered with Free Minds have commented that they’ve found the experience to be a bright spot in their weeks. Latorre shared that “in these times where things have been so negative, Free Minds has given [JLW] members a chance to find joy in bringing positivity into someone else’s life.”

Stephanie Driscoll, a current DIAD Committee member, explained, “I love the Free Minds Book Club events. I went to one last year, in-person, and tonight was my third Free Minds event this year. Beyond the poetry, I have really enjoyed these events in the virtual space because of the opportunity to connect with the Free Minds team and ambassadors. I hope that after COVID-19 we still have that connection with the team and the opportunities to hear the stories of those from the program - it just makes this volunteer opportunity that much more rewarding.”

Compiled words of encouragement from DIAD volunteers for a young poet.