Folk singer John Flynn facilitates a discussion group at Howard R. Young Correctional Institution. Mettalfour Records

John Flynn is trying to make the world a better place with his music and his deeds.

The Brandywine Hundred resident is a folksinger and volunteer trying to prepare inmates for the real world. And last week he sang "God Bless America" during the seventh-inning stretech at a Phillies playoff game.

"More than just a good songwriter, performer or guitar player, John Flynn is a friend because he actually does the kinds of things to help make the world a little better that other people write, sing and play about," singer Arlo Guthrie says on Flynn's Web site, www.johnflynn.net.

The site also quotes another friend, singer Kris Kristofferson: "He's got great heart, and I really like the way he thinks."

Flynn facilitates a discussion group called New Beginnings at the Howard R. Young Correctional Institution in Wilmington, familiarly known as Gander Hill. The program, which also involved his father, Jack, and has a new recruit named Ken Pulliam, is about giving participants the tools that they need to stay out of jail.

But the inmates also teach Flynn.

"They have their own stories and wisdom," he said. "The world I know is one small part of the world at large. I grew up with opportunity -- and they didn't."

Correctional center rules don't allow him to bring his guitar in, so the group sings a cappella. One song that they recently sang together is called "Cure," which he described as being about an urban tree with poisonous leaves. Short-sighted people want to cut it down, but wiser heads suggest studying it (and learning that medicine can be made from these leaves).

Flynn wants to have participants accept responsibility for their past and "understand they have power over their future." People too often make excuses and blame external factors instead of admitting that they made choices -- and, he said, if they're bad, they need to make new choices. "I want them to learn that they own the ability to change their lives, that they have been given an opportunity to step up to the values that I have sung about."

"He's awesome," said Jean Booker, volunteer coordinator for the institution. "He's a blessing."

For a decade, Flynn also has been performing at benefits for Camp Dreamcatcher, a summer camp in Chester County, Pa., for children affected by HIV and AIDS.

In September, Armando P. Ibáñez, a Dominican friar and founder of Pluma Pictures, honored Kristofferson, Flynn and humanitarian Michael Paz with the first Shining Star awards. Pluma, founded in 2001 to produce films about the importance of family and community, is releasing a documentary about Hurricane Katrina victims. "Not Broken" features songs by Flynn and Kristofferson.

Flynn's song, "Passunder," ends with this hopeful thought: "If someday we realize that God still speaks to us all in our hearts not just through words that long dead prophets scrawled, we'll heal this wounded city and make strong its levee walls ... in New Orleans."

So how did a 50-year-old with a ukelele named Sonny (after Sonny Ochs, "because it's small and fills the room with sweetness") end up like this?

Flynn grew up in Ridley Park, Pa., and worked his way through Temple University playing in a band and winning songwriting contests.

e intended to study law, but a sojourn to Nashville led him to songwriting career. In Nashville, his first publisher also published works by Kristofferson. A friendship with the Guthrie family led him to performing in 2005 on Guthrie's "Train to New Orleans" tour to help musicians devastated by Katrina.

His iPod today has about 3,000 songs, some of them demos that he is working on, but well-represented by his musical heroes, Johnny Cash, Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, John Prine and The Beatles.

Flynn's half-dozen CDs first emphasized music for children, but lately he's been more interested in political and social justice. In an interview, he talked about the importance of his faith (Roman Catholicism), his four children (seeing the world anew through their eyes) and truth (quoting Arlo Guthrie: "It doesn't matter if you're wrong. It matters that you tell the truth.")

"Two Wolves," the title track of his latest CD, focuses on an American Indian legend that each human heart has two wolves, one demanding rage, the other light and love. And "the wolf that wins is the one you feed," he said.

As he wrote earlier this year on his blog: "As far as I can tell there are two kinds of folksingers ... the first are the kind who mostly just sing about a better world. ... The second kind of folksingers are the kind who aren't afraid to put down the guitar and roll up their sleeves. Human beings who really walk the walk."