Inmates give back to nonprofits

Offenders incarcerated at Pine Lodge Correction Center for Women are learning about giving back to the community by making donations to nonprofit organizations that have touched the inmates’ lives.

For the second year in a row, Pine Lodge held a ceremony to distribute $5,000 to various charities.

The funds are raised though the sale of food items and photographs inmates have taken on visiting days or to send to family members. Each photograph costs $1.50 – a lot of money to women who earn anywhere from 30 cents to a dollar an hour working in the prison.

The inmates choose the charities, often selecting groups whose services the women have used. When it comes time to give, there’s a lot of emotion – from the offenders because it means so much to them to be able to give money, and from representatives of the charities, because they knew how hard the women worked to collect the funds.

Paulette Melville, a Pine Lodge inmate, said when she was young, she was in an abusive relationship. The Vanessa Behan Crisis Nursery offered her a place to take her daughter.

“I knew she was safe,” Melville said. She later took another child to the nursery when she was a struggling college student and single mother. Her daughter now uses Vanessa Behan when times get too tough for her.

Vanessa Behan received a check for $600.

The Medical Lake Food Bank and Outreach benefits from Pine Lodge during the summer months, when the women bring in fresh produce they have grown in their garden.

“It’s a pleasure to be giving back to the community,” Melville told Duane Wolfe, the president of the board of the food bank.

When presented with a check for $500, Wolfe spoke expressed his gratitude to the women.

“What does this mean to us?” he asked. “A lot. You have enabled us, with past donations, to purchase our own building.”

Wolfe also said the food bank appreciates the donations of produce in the summer.

“They’re so excited when they bring it in,” he said.

Another charity that benefited from the women at Pine Lodge was the Little Bus that Could, an organization that transports the families and children of offenders from the west side of the state to Medical Lake at Mother’s Day, Christmas and before the first day of school.

“I see my children three times a year,” said Laura Mitchell-Kallerman, who presented Richard Shaw of the charity with a check for $1,000. “They treat my children as their own children.”

Other charities receiving checks were Rebuilding Families, Inc., $1,000; Project Warm Up, $500; the Women Helping Women Fund, $350; the Union Gospel Mission of Spokane, $350; the Women and Children’s Free Restaurant, $350; and Transitions Program for Women, $350.