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Support the Claremont Forum with your financial contribution today. Only with your help can we continue to offer the creative community programming and service projects you’ve come to enjoy. We need your gift or membership renewal today.

Join us any day Monday – Friday, 10 am – 5 pm Book Packing and Postage for the Prison Library Project

Join other volunteers to help package and prepare books for prisoners. Good company, good project. Even One Volunteer Hour Makes a Big Difference. Please Join Us!

The Claremont Farmers &
Artists Market

Sundays, 8 am - 1 pm
Great Veggies, Fruits, Flowers, Arts

Wander around and enjoy the fellowship and the sights, sounds and smells of freshness!
Manager: Oscar De Leon
714/345-3087

Support our Prison Library Project

If you participate in a church or social group interested in community services please join us packaging and wrapping books sent to prisoners all across the country. Everyone is welcome to support this effort!

Call 909-626.3066 for information.

Visit the Thoreau Bookshop where we have assembled a unique collection of high quality books and tapes. We carry fiction, philosophy, psychology, health & healing, cookbooks, poetry, art and more!

Open M – Th, 10 a.m.– 5 p.m., Friday, 10 a.m.– 7 p.m., or call The Forum for our weekend hours. 909-626.3066

A Community Service Project of The Claremont Forum

History

The Prison Library Project is a community service project of the Claremont Forum, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to enrich lives through education, arts, and wellness programs. The Prison Library Project was founded in 1973 by Ram Dass and Bo Lozoff in Durham, North Carolina. The PLP relocated to Claremont, California in 1986. We celebrated twenty years of service in Claremont in 2006.

What We Do

The PLP receives nearly 200 letters a week from inmates. We mail over 30,000 books each year to individuals and libraries in 600 prisons, jails, and detention centers throughout the United States. Chaplains from local jails, including Los Angeles County Jail, pick up books to take into the jails. We also provide inmates and others with our Ways and Means resource list, a compilation of over 400 different service and legal organizations concerned with the unique situation faced by prisoners and those returning to society after being incarcerated. Boxes of materials are also hand-delivered to local prisons and community organizations such as House of Ruth, Prototypes, and Crossroads.

How You Can Help

The PLP is a non-profit organization, staffed by volunteers, and funded by donations and Claremont Forum events and fundraisers. The books we provide are obtained through donations by publishers, bookstores, and private individuals, and mainly focus on personal and spiritual growth, health, self-esteem, and various religious traditions. Inmates also request books of history, literature and fiction, so we gladly accept books of that type as well. Dictionaries are requested most frequently and we’re always in need. We send primarily paperback books to prisoners due to prison regulations. Hardback books are directed to 1) the area facilities where volunteers deliver or staff members come to pick up; or 2) turned into dollars-for-postage in our Thoreau Bookshop.

SEE Prison Library in the menu for more information.