Children of Incarcerated Parents

Table 3:
Number and Percentage of Mentors Reported Engaging in Given Activities
During a Sample Month*
Number
Percentage
Total Matches with Contact 253 —
School work 22 9%
Playing sports 16 6%
Sporting event, movie, theater 52 21%
Eating a meal 99 39%
Attending church services 52 21%
Attending other church activities 41 16%
Just “hanging out” 139 55%
Other 146 58%
Source: Amachi Year Longitudinal Report, April 1, 2001-March 31, 2003.
*Data are for the month of December 2002.
These activities are intended to be fun for both the volunteers and children—
and, in the words of one pastor,“to add some kind of happiness” to the children’s
lives.They also, as another pastor noted, give the children opportunities to
see a life beyond their immediate surroundings. Mentoring exposes them to the
arts, to culture, to other people, to the larger world.“People are always the product
of their environment,” he said.“If their environment is small, their lives are
small.”
Most importantly, though, regularly spending time together in activities allows
the child to gradually see the mentor as a reliable, supportive adult, and this
helps the pair form the kind of adult-child friendship that exemplifies strong
mentoring relationships. One pastor explained:
The children really want to be with people they feel are positive.They’re looking for people...who
are going to spend time, that’s going to be consistent time they can depend on,
that’s not going to be broken.
Mentors have noted how important it feels to the children to “have their
own special time.” As one mentor observed:
[My mentee] is possessive of me. She doesn’t want her sisters [who also have mentors]
to come with us. She says,“I need to have my time.” She needs her time away from it
all, having this one person who’s just about her, who wants to know for real how her
day is. For her, it’s exciting; it’s very exciting.There’s someone who’s just for her.
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AMACHI