Children's Literacy Foundation

McDougall: Roughly 70-percent of the inmates here in the prison are mothers. And those children, for a variety of reasons, are at very high risk for growing up with low literacy skills. And what we’re doing when we’re working with inmates who are parents, is we’re trying to help them and encourage them to share books with their kids. And so we’re giving these inmates tips on how to make reading fun and easy even if they’re not strong readers.

One of the programs that we have involves giving books to inmates who are parents that they can read aloud onto audio tape and CDs, and then mail home to their kids. And that’s a way for us to make sure that the kids are still connected with their parents through something that’s very important, and that is books and reading.

Children who grow up without strong literacy skills are going to be facing so many challenges and many of the inmates who are in prison today, are there in part because they had problems reading and their windows of opportunity were closed to them. So what we’re trying to do is break out of that cycle.

So each of you can choose two books for each of your kids including kids to come (applause).

Yogi: My name is Yogi, I’m an inmate at the NH Sate Prison for women. I am the mother of five and the grandmother of two. I picked out Maya Angelou for my 11 year old.