People and Stories/Gente y Cuentos was developed to use literature to accomplish several goals with participants: to increase their self-worth, to develop their critical thinking skills and, ultimately, to change their relationship to the world. The New Jersey Council for the Humanities runs approximately 30 programs a year at senior citizen centers, prisons, libraries, homeless shelters and community centers. Some of the sessions are organized for youth, and others include youth in multigenerational programs. The sessions are made up of 90-minute classes held once a week for 8 weeks. At each session, highly trained program coordinators read aloud a short story by a renowned writer. After the story is read, the coordinators ask questions that focus specifically on the poetic texture of the short story. The program is unique because it asks participants to focus on the literature--not only on reading skills. The result is that participants who do not think of themselves and each other as capable of speaking intelligently about literature find themselves discussing complex ideas. Participants bring their own life experiences into the discussions and begin to see their lives in a different way. "The program breaks down stereotypes by showing common experience through literature," explains Georgia Whidden at the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. "Participants discover that they have the ability to communicate about literature and controversial issues, which increases their self-confidence. We find that people enrolled in this program will go on afterwards to join a GED [general equivalency diploma] or English-as-a-Second-Language program, which they would not have felt comfortable doing before."