You can help support the Unit Literacy Group by purchasing needed books or supplies from our wish list below.

If you have questions or need assistance, please email us at

UnitLiteracyGroup@gmail.com

Your support is greatly appreciated!

is an Educational Based Recovery Environment. We acknowledge the value of creating projects, programs and spaces conducive to facilitating literacy, while simultaneously supporting mental wellness and recovery. The inspiration to create the ULG came in 2017, while providing services as a Certified Peer Specialist (CPS) at Pennsylvania’s State Correctional Institution Greene. Upon launching the initial ULG, I found that although I had anticipated functioning in the capacity of a tutor, facilitation of group sessions greatly demanded my skills as a CPS as well. Immediately, it was obvious that many of the men were deeply scarred by their life’s experiences, and that their academic challenges were part of their trauma. Understanding, signs of stress, anxiety, depression, and fear created great obstacles to academic advancement and created further barriers to group commitment. Recognizing those issues, coupled with embarrassment and shame, it quickly became apparent that it was necessary to transition from a strictly academic approach, to that of creating recovery based environments that support adult literacy.”

“The Unit Literacy Group (ULG)

- K. Kabasha Griffin-El, Founder

Illustration by K. Kabasha Griffin-El

to promote

wellness and recovery

through literacy

- Unit Literacy Group’s mission

“When the prison gates slam behind an inmate, he does not lose his human quality; his mind does not become closed to ideas; his intellect does not cease to feed on a free and open interchange of opinions; his yearning for self-respect does not end; nor is his question for self-realization concluded. If anything, the needs for identity and self-respect are more compelling in the dehumanizing prison environment. Whether an O. Henry writing his short stories in a jail cell or a frightened young inmate writing his family, a prisoner needs a medium for self-expression. It is the role of the First Amendment and this Court to protect those precious personal rights by which we satisfy such basic yearnings of the human spirit.”

— The Honorable Justice Thurgood Marshall

United States Supreme Court

Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396 (1974)