Receiving a card or a small gift from an incarcerated parent can mean the world to many children during the holidays — and a Christian nonprofit has been helping make those Christmas wishes come true for 41 years.
Prison Fellowship’s Angel Tree Christmas program will reach 250,000 children this year, providing each child with a small gift valued at $25 and spiritual materials. Inmates suggest the child’s gift, and local church volunteers do the shopping and delivery.
Helping families maintain relationships is vital, said Charles Rock, senior director for church mobilization operations at the Lansdowne, Virginia-based organization.
According to the 2016 Bureau of Justice Statistics Survey of Prison Inmates, at least half of all incarcerated adults are parents of minor children, a total of more than 1 million.
“Kids that have incarcerated parents face a number of challenge challenges,” Mr. Rock said. “They’re four times more likely to suffer from mental health problems, including depression and attention disorders, they’re three times more likely than their peers to grow up in poverty. And they are six times more likely to one day be involved in the criminal justice system themselves.”
He said children need to know that their parent cares for them, even if that mother or father can’t be present for the holiday. The Angel Tree Christmas program “helps with a pathway to strengthen that connection, and keep that relationship and hopefully help with any kind of reconciliation or restoration there,” he said.
Nearly all of the prisoners who participate in the program will return to society at some point and another aspect of the program gives those former inmates a church community that can assist with that reentry, he added.
“When the gifts are delivered on behalf of the parent with their personal message to them, it just means a whole lot,” Mr. Rock said.
He said the Angel Tree Christmas program started in 1982, when former Alabama inmate Mary Kay Beard came up with the idea after seeing women in her prison wrap up small toiletry items and “anything they could get from the commissary” to send to their children. A shopping mall in Montgomery, Alabama, allowed her to put up tags listing desired gifts for children, which shoppers would fulfill.
Mr. Rock has coordinated Angel Tree Christmas efforts at his own church for 12 years and has heard stories of a child sleeping with a gift such as a basketball “because it came from dad,” even if that father is incarcerated far from their home, which often is the case.
He said the program has rebounded from COVID-19-related difficulties and will have served the most children since the pandemic. Inflation and economic uncertainty have not had a major impact on church participation, he added.
“We’re working with about 5,000 churches — a little more than that — in order to deliver these gifts,” he said. “It’s always a stretch, but the Lord provides.”
Along with its Christmas program, Prison Fellowship encourages churches to participate in an annual camping program, where children can attend free of charge thanks to donations the organization receives.
The churches also are informed when a child’s birthday is coming up so that the youngster can be remembered at that time, he said. Congregations are encouraged to write letters to the incarcerated parent expressing thanks for being allowed to minister to a child, sending a photo of the gift being opened if a facility allows that.
“We want to make sure there’s back-to-school events and those sorts of things so that the churches try to maintain that relationship, so that it’s great for the guys [in prison] to really know that people deliver on the promise” of caring for an inmate’s family, Mr. Rock said.
The late Chuck Colson, the infamous White House special counsel of the Nixon administration, founded the Christian outreach group in 1976 after his own stint in a federal penitentiary.
