Hawai‘i agency receives $1.5 million fatherhood grant

A $250,000 per year, five-year federal fatherhood-strengthening grant has been awarded to Read To Me International, a Hawai‘i nonprofit, to work with Hawai‘i fathers who are inmates on the mainland. The grant will support the Read To Me Prison Literacy Program, which engages inmates incarcerated in Florence, Ariz., who have children between two and 10 years of age.

The program will encourage inmates to stay in touch with their children through instruction on positive and active parenting, group mentoring sessions, information about the importance of reading aloud to children, instruction on the selection of age-appropriate quality children’s literature, video-conference visits with and letter writing to their children.

Hawai‘i has relocated inmates to out-of-state contract prisons since 1995. Today, 1,750 of the 1,900 inmates housed in these facilities are male felons separated from their children and families. For more information the grant, contact Liane Akana (808) 955-7600 or liane@readtomeintl.org.

Read To Me International’s Prison Literacy Program in Hawai‘i works with inmate-parents or grandparents of school-age children to select books for their children, write personalized notes on the inside of the book covers and record the stories onto cassette tapes. Both the tapes and books are then mailed to the children.