Tommy Kapai Wilson has recently launched a Givealittle project to help the 20,000 children in Aotearoa disconnected from a parent in prison.
If inmates can reconnect with family before they come out, there is a 40 per cent chance they will not re-offend and go back. This is consistent with overseas incarceration statistics and for Tommy, it is the silver lining in our long dark cloud of so-called sensible sentencing.
“Surely we should be building bigger stronger family relationships within our disconnected members of our community and not building bigger prisons”, says Tommy.
When Daddy Comes Home is a children’s book about a little girl who wants to reconnect with her Dad, as he does with her, and it launched at 11.11am on October 1 (yes, it’s that Buddhist thing again) with friends and whanau from a diverse range of backgrounds.
However, we all share a solution-based approach to building a better community for us all to live in.
It doesn’t matter where you come from or where you stand on the ladder of perceived success, a connected community is good for everyone, and when we start engaging with all sectors, the currency we measure success with shifts from what we have to what we can share.
We all can afford $10 to buy a book for one of the 20,000 disconnected kids.
Above, is the little girl’s prison prayer on the back page of When Daddy Comes Home, a kid’s book Children’s Commissioner Judge Beecroft has told us, is up on his office wall.
PLEASE give $10 to help one child receive a book; givealittle.co.nz/cause/whendaddycomeshome
