A reading/fatherhood connection…even in prison
Interesting story from the Arizona Republic about Hawaiian inmates in Arizona prisons making a long distance reading connection with their children:
Hawaiian inmates reading to their kids
Dads at Eloy prison recording books on CDs that are sent home for families to enjoy
by Lindsey Gemme - Nov. 25, 2008 12:00 AM
Casa Grande Dispatch
CASA GRANDE - It’s never too late to try being the best parent one can be, even from a prison cell an ocean from home.
More than 100 Hawaiian prisoners housed in Eloy are learning to do just that, through books, thanks to a program of the Hawaii-based Read-to-Me International organization.
For Garret Borges, his incarceration at the strictly Hawaiian Corrections Corp. of America prison Saguaro Correctional Facility in Eloy has been hard on him and his family.
His daughters, one 6 and 4-year-old twins, haven’t seen their father in the flesh in almost four years. Letters can only do so much, and a 20-minute phone call to Hawaii costs about $5.
But Borges and about 130 other Hawaiian prisoners with children have a new way to keep a relationship with their kids despite being apart, by reading books.
Thanks to a $1.25 million Promoting Responsible Fatherhood federal grant from the Department of Health and Human Services, Saguaro has been able to give incarcerated parents a program called Fathers Bridging the Miles, part of the Read-to-Me International organization.
It has given hundreds of Hawaiian inmates a chance to choose two books a month to send to each of their children ages 2 to 10 years. Inmates use a digital recorder so their children can pop in the CD and read along with their physically absent father.
