In March 2009 Civil Society Institute started and still continues a initiative dedicated to prisoners. The main aim of the initiative is to enrich prison libraries with different genre books and to improve libraries conditions.

Since Soviet Union has collapsed, prison's libraries have been abandoned. There is no infrastructure or simple basis for taking care about it. Civil Society Institute is willing to improve this situation at least with short term charity action.

The focus group of the initiative is prisoners, located in 13 Armenian prisons. Civil Society Institute wills to collect large amount of books and to provide it to each of these prisons. With this initiative Civil Society Institute wishes to improve situation of prisoner's rights in Armenia.

The realization of initiative is based on people who are kindly donating books from their personal libraries. Welcomed literature is in different genres and different languages: from fiction, science - fiction, science books to periodical and informational literature, dictionaries etc. Taking into consideration the fact that majority of prisoners are Armenian speaking people, Civil Society Institute especially welcomes books in Armenian language. In any case each material in any other language will be appreciated as well. We have already collected approximately 4000 books and other materials (journals, informational publication etc.). Despite it, there still is the need of financial support for:

• providing dictionaries (as mostly people give books in Russian or English);
• equipment: changing old shelves in prison libraries;
• transportation expenses for collecting and providing books;
• advertising initiative in media;
• for organizing thanks event for those institutions and persons, who kindly donate books or in different way support this initiative.

We are kindly asking to continue supporting our project by books or by money. Our initiative will last till the end of May, so please contact us as soon as possible:

Laura Valauskaite
lauravalauskaite@gmail.com
tel: 574317
mob: 077 822365
43 Aygestan 11th street, Yerevan 0025 Armenia

We want to say sincere thanks to all those kind people, organizations and institutions, which responded to our project:Knarik Arakelyan

• Zara Avetisyan
• Tigran Simyan
• Gayane Harutyunyan
• Anna Darbinyan
• Samvel Movsisyan
• Jema Babayan 
• Anastasia Danielan 
• Jevgenija I. Zargaryan 
• Armine Aristarkesyan 
• Lithuanian Embassy - Olga Arzumanian 
• United Nations in Armenia - Gayane Gabrielyan
• U. S. Embassy in Yerevan - Nerses Hayrapetyan
• Armenian informational centre of science and technology
• "Aravot" newspaper: Aram Zakaryan, Ruzan Minasyan, Nelli Grigoryan, Gohar Hakobyan, Ashot Hakobyan.
• Museum of Armenia's nature: Gayane Ghazaryan, Anahit Akmakzhyan.
• Collective of Yerevan State College of Light Industry: director Sergej S. Kocharyan
• Mhitar Sebastatsi Educational Complex
• Liana Marukyan