It's not the fact that Marilyn Long and Elizabeth Albright elect to spend every Wednesday reading with female inmates in the Allegheny County Jail.

It's the way they go about it.

For the past seven years, the two have spent at least six hours a month on a project called "A Mother's Voice," recording women inmates as they read books to their children.

Rather than just serving as project facilitators, Ms. Long and Ms. Albright manage to become part mother, part friend, part counselor -- soothing inmates overcome with emotion about being separated from their children.

"They talk to them like they're women, like they're their neighbor," said Antoinette Grier, family strengthening specialist at Lydia's Place, which helps female offenders and their children and runs the Mother's Voice project. "The women are getting someone from the community who, if only for 10 or 15 minutes, sees them in the role they hold most dear -- as a mother or grandmother and not as an inmate."

Based on their dedication and their effectiveness, Ms. Long and Ms. Albright have been selected as finalists for Most Outstanding Volunteer of the Year for the 2009 Jefferson Awards for Public Service.

The winner will be announced at an award ceremony Feb. 11 and will represent Western Pennsylvania at the national Jefferson Awards ceremony in Washington, D.C., this summer.

The program is administered locally by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette with sponsorship by Highmark, The Pittsburgh Foundation and The Heinz Endowments.

FISA Foundation will donate $1,000 to Lydia's Place on behalf of the women.

Ms. Albright and Ms. Long have been friends for more than 25 years. After leading a community Bible study together for several years, they searched for a new volunteer opportunity and were drawn to A Mother's Voice.

"We wanted to do something in which we worked with people who might not otherwise have a lot of attention," said Ms. Albright, 65, of Oakland. "We liked the idea that it served not only the mothers while they were in jail but these children that were left behind. It appealed to our mother's heart, you could say."

Of the female inmates in the Allegheny County Jail, 75 percent have children under age 16 -- encompassing about 7,000 children in Alleghey County, according to the Pittsburgh Child Guidance Foundation.

Last year, the Mother's Voice program served 95 inmates and 177 children, said Ms. Grier, who nominated the women for the Jefferson Award.

Ms. Albright and Ms. Long are gentle, religious, law-abiding grandmothers. But they approach the inmates in an utterly accepting and nonjudgmental manner.

"They don't frighten me at all," said Ms. Long, 64, of Squirrel Hill. "I really look at them more as God's children and my children and pray for them. Lots of times my heart will break. I will think, 'This poor girl.What in the world led her to this?' "

Sometimes, the women are eager to explain the circumstances of their incarceration. Other times, they stay mostly silent until they bring reading. But oftentimes, once they pick out a book and start to read, they get emotional.

In the 18 months that Ms. Grier has been running the program, she can only think of two instances when a first-time reader has not cried.

"They're just full of emotion because some of them so miss their children and are so sorry they've made the mistakes they've made," said Ms. Albright, who previously worked as an elementary school teacher. "We just try to encourage and comfort them and assure them that this program will help the children."

Ms. Albright and Ms. Long try to be encouraging, complimenting mothers who read well and asking if they did well in school.

Particularly for mothers of teenagers, the books often provide a starting point in phone conversations that might otherwise be empty and awkward, said Ms. Albright, who now works part time for a local movie theater company and as a volunteer administrative assistant to the Pittsburgh Gospel Choir.

Ms. Grier said that the books mean so much to some of the children that she's heard stories about them carrying the books around with them everywhere they go.

After each volunteering session, Ms. Albright and Ms. Long go out to lunch and discuss the events of the day. Sometimes the stories are funny: the mother who belted out "On Top of Spaghetti" before each story or the mother who made gestures into the audio recorder. Others seem so hardened until they begin to read, or are so outgoing, or seem so sweet and gentle.

"You just want to hold them -- you can't, we're not supposed to touch them -- but you just want to hold them," said Ms. Long, who works as a care manager's assistant for the Senior Bridge eldercare organization.

"They're all so different, like snowflakes."

Doug Oster writes a blog, "Growing With Doug," exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.