Finding Hope in Unlikely Places

On The Road Blog

By Sarah Modica on October 18th, 2011
Category: Blog, North America

Washington, DC – On Friday, August 19, I spent the day in prison. Of course, I was lucky—unlike most people at the Federal Correctional Institution in Cumberland, MD, I was only there for the day, to visit the Father-to-Child Summer Camp run by GFC grantee partner Hope House. The main goals of Hope House are to strengthen families with incarcerated fathers; reduce the isolation, stigma, shame, and risk these families experience; and raise public awareness about the at-risk population of children and youth who have an incarcerated father. The Father-to-Child Summer Camp is just one of the ways that Hope House does this.

The summer camp brings children who live in the DC area to prisons to spend a week with their fathers. The children are with their dads in the prison each day for several hours and spend the night doing camp activities (telling ghost stories, making s’mores, etc.) at a local campground. For a few of these families, it is the first time the father will meet his child. And for almost all of the families, it is the only time each year they get to see each other in person.

The day I visited was the final day of the weeklong camp for 15 fathers in the Cumberland facility and their children. I knew it would be an emotional day, since families would be reflecting on their week together and saying good-bye to each other for another year. I brought a lot of tissues (I cry at everything) and tried to prepare myself emotionally for what the experience would be like. What I did not prepare for is how hopeful and inspired I would feel at the end of the day.

The day started with dancing and singing—I felt like I was at Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Of course, that excitement couldn’t last all day. Emotions ran higher and higher as the day progressed. But every bit of it was inspirational. The kids and their fathers presented giant murals of their “perfect day” that they had been working on all week. One perfect day mural was a father serving his daughter a nice dinner in their dining room at home (pass the tissues!). The families also performed songs they had written and produced over the course of the week. One song, between a young father and his 9-year-old son, was about how the father could see himself in his son’s eyes and how the son could look in his father’s eyes to see his father’s dreams for him (more tissues, please!).

Not a day has gone by since the site visit that I haven’t thought of it. The passion and desire you could see in each of the fathers to have the chance to be a hands-on parent to their children was awe inspiring. The love the children felt for their dads and the longing to have a relationship with them was palpable. I’ve been on emotional site visits before, but this one takes the cake (and used all my tissues). I can’t wait for next summer, knowing that these 15 children (and more) will have another opportunity to spend a week bonding and building a relationship with their dads…and I can’t wait until the next time I get to see my own dad!