by Haley Carter

Sigma Kappa Delta of NorthWest Arkansas Community College, a chapter of the English Honors Society for two year colleges, intends to collect 6,000 soft cover composition notebooks as donations towards a volunteer-run program called Arkansas Free Read, said Sabrina Chesne, professor of English, and co-advisor of SKD. Arkansas Free Read is a program developed to help incarcerated women in the state of Arkansas receive donated books and similar education materials. The Ministry of Grace Chapter of Daughters of the King, and St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Little Rock, Ark., run th program, according to the Arkansas Free Read’s website.

People can deposit notebooks into the decorated boxes placed throughout NWACC campus buildings, Chesne said, including in front of the Pauline Whitaker Library in Burns Hall, the Barnes and Noble Bookstore in the Becky Paneitz Student Center, the Shewmaker Center for Global Business Development, the Health Professions building, and in the Melba Shewmaker National Child Protection Training Center. Collection of donated notebooks ends May 6, Chesne said. 

The requirements for the composition notebooks are for them to have light-weight, bendable cardboard covers, and glued or sewn in pages, Chesne said. If the opportunity to donate to this cause was missed, or to obtain more knowledge about the organization, visit the Arkansas Free Read’s website at arfreeread.org.