The Shannon Trust
Encyclopedia
The Shannon Trust was founded in 1997 by Christopher Morgan MBE
, a farmer from Sussex
. In the early nineties he joined a pen friend scheme run by the Prison Reform Trust
and began corresponding with a life sentenced prisoner, Tom Shannon.
Through Tom’s letters, Christopher learned about prison life and about the shocking levels of poor literacy amongst prisoners. In 1995 the letters were put together in a book titled, ‘Invisible Crying Tree’. The royalties from the sale of the book were used to found the Shannon Trust.
Christopher took his idea for the Shannon Reading Plan to the Director General of the Prison Service who was sceptical and challenged him to make it work in HMP Wandsworth, a notoriously busy prison in London. It took a further three years of experimentation before the Shannon Reading Plan really started to impact on the lives of non-reading prisoners.
In 2001, Neil Lodge, a prison officer at HMP Wandsworth took an interest in the Shannon Reading Plan and by the end of the year he had developed a workable plan and produced 48 new readers. Neil observed that those involved not only benefited from learning to read but also from increased confidence, raised self-esteem and improved behaviour.
The major breakthrough came through the discovery of ‘Toe by Toe’ which is designed to help children and adults learn to read from the beginning. The Shannon Trust runs the Toe by Toe Reading Plan, an award-winning peer mentoring programme that encourages and supports prisoners who can read to give one-to-one tuition to prisoners who struggle to read. The Toe by Toe Reading Plan is now operating in nearly every UK prison. In 2007, the charity provided resources to teach over five thousand new learners in prison.
The Shannon Trust has been granted charitable funding from many sources. Christopher Morgan and the Shannon Trust have won awards for their contribution to learning in prisons, including The Longford Prize
in 2004 and the Centre for Social Justice
award in 2005.
MBE
MBE can stand for:* Mail Boxes Etc.* Management by exception* Master of Bioethics* Master of Bioscience Enterprise* Master of Business Engineering* Master of Business Economics* Mean Biased Error...
, a farmer from Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
. In the early nineties he joined a pen friend scheme run by the Prison Reform Trust
Prison Reform Trust
The Prison Reform Trust was founded in 1981 in London, England by a small group of prison reform campaigners who were unhappy with the direction in which the Howard League for Penal Reform was heading, concentrating more on community punishments than on traditional prison reform issues...
and began corresponding with a life sentenced prisoner, Tom Shannon.
Through Tom’s letters, Christopher learned about prison life and about the shocking levels of poor literacy amongst prisoners. In 1995 the letters were put together in a book titled, ‘Invisible Crying Tree’. The royalties from the sale of the book were used to found the Shannon Trust.
Christopher took his idea for the Shannon Reading Plan to the Director General of the Prison Service who was sceptical and challenged him to make it work in HMP Wandsworth, a notoriously busy prison in London. It took a further three years of experimentation before the Shannon Reading Plan really started to impact on the lives of non-reading prisoners.
In 2001, Neil Lodge, a prison officer at HMP Wandsworth took an interest in the Shannon Reading Plan and by the end of the year he had developed a workable plan and produced 48 new readers. Neil observed that those involved not only benefited from learning to read but also from increased confidence, raised self-esteem and improved behaviour.
The major breakthrough came through the discovery of ‘Toe by Toe’ which is designed to help children and adults learn to read from the beginning. The Shannon Trust runs the Toe by Toe Reading Plan, an award-winning peer mentoring programme that encourages and supports prisoners who can read to give one-to-one tuition to prisoners who struggle to read. The Toe by Toe Reading Plan is now operating in nearly every UK prison. In 2007, the charity provided resources to teach over five thousand new learners in prison.
The Shannon Trust has been granted charitable funding from many sources. Christopher Morgan and the Shannon Trust have won awards for their contribution to learning in prisons, including The Longford Prize
The Longford Prize
The Longford Prize is an annual award presented to an organisation or individual working in the field of social or penal reform. It began in 2001 and is named in memory of Lord Longford, a British Labour Party politician and penal reform campaigner....
in 2004 and the Centre for Social Justice
Centre for Social Justice
The Centre for Social Justice is an independent, not-for-profit thinktank set up by the Rt. Hon Iain Duncan Smith MP, to advance the education of the public in the subject of social justice and to promote the role of the voluntary sector...
award in 2005.