Sharon Content and Children of Promise Nurtures Youth Missing Their Parents in Prison

Fern Gillespie
The Children of Promise, based in Brooklyn and The Bronx, has made a promise to nurture and empower children who are dealing with the stress and heartache of having a parent in prison.
“The children are wearing the burden of their parent’s imprisonment,” Sharon Content, Founder and President of Children of Promise, NYC, told Our Time Press. “Society may have a certain level of compassion for your parent’s military deployment, death, or divorce. The normal response is ‘I’m so sorry to hear that.’ When a child loses a parent as a result of incarceration, that same level of empathy doesn’t exist. They are the collateral damage of mass incarceration.”

This year marks the 15th anniversary of Children of Promise. Content, who was born in Queens, studied English and finance at Howard University. She had a brief financial career on Wall Street. Then, 27 years ago, she discovered her true mission was to mentor and guide at-risk youth affected by the prison system. As Director of Programs at the Osborn Association, she worked with teenagers who were mandated by the court to participate in the academic and entrepreneurship skill-building program.

“I realized that I loved working with young people. I discovered the passion that I was looking for,” she recalled. “I remember in my exit interview saying thank you for helping me find my calling.”

Serving as Chief Operating Officer of the Boys and Girls Club of the Bronx, she dealt with 15 sites and over 3,000 young people in after-school and summer camp programs. “Whenever I would meet a grandmother, she would lean in and say: “Well, his mother is in prison,” Content explained. “These are children that were having issues and problems in the program so they would send them to me. I would meet with the family.

They were having disciplinary issues like his dad is in prison or his mom is in prison, but no one said anything up until that point.”
“This is the population that is being ignored and neglected by society. There was no referral or agency that I could send them to,” she said. That’s when her entrepreneurial skills kicked in to create Children of Promise, an organization specifically for children of incarcerated parents.
New York has 105,000 children who have parents who are incarcerated.

More than half of the prison population are parents. One in nine Black children and one in 28 Latino children have a parent in prison. According to the Prison Fellowship report, 88 percent of incarcerated fathers rely on the mother of the children to provide daily care 37 percent of incarcerated mothers rely on the father to provide primary care, 45 percent rely on the children’s grandparents, 23 percent rely on other friends and relatives, and 11 percent rely on foster care.

For two years, Content carefully developed Children of Promise in her home. She utilized her corporate experience to design the program. “I put that into that the design, model, ambiance, aesthetics, and quality of staffing,” she said. “To design a quality program that allowed our families to feel proud and have dignity in a population that’s really dealing with a stigma.”

Children of Promise’s youth, ages 6 to 18, are called “scholars” for self-esteem and empowerment. “We refer to them as scholars because we want them to understand the full potential they have in spite of the situation,” she said. “For many of the participants in our program, they are not getting the accolades. These are not the students that are hearing their names at award ceremonies. These are not your star athletes. Most of our young people are dealing with the trauma, and it is manifesting in some behavior, or they are dealing with the challenges of having a parent in prison.”

“Mental health is infused in all aspects of the program. The scholars have clinicians,” said Content. “It’s therapeutic art, drama, spoken word, music therapy, sports. It allows the scholars multiple opportunities to express what they’re feeling.” The organization provides a wide range of support, including food, clothes, and toys during Christmas.

The Children of Promise program, Bond Beyond Bars, is connecting children and families with incarcerated loved ones. “It’s done through in-person visits, virtual visits, FaceTime, and letter writing,” she said. “Also, we make the J Pay app available. We pay the fees. Families can come in and log in and send emails, letters, photographs, and email them to incarcerated parents.” In addition, there is an adult mentoring program for young scholars.

“We integrate the incarcerated parents back into society and into the family. We work with our critical staff, and the scholars can continue to attend the program,” she said. “The child and their family have a vision of what will happen when mom or dad returns. Then, mom or dad has a vision of what it will be like when they return. Sometimes they don’t align. So we work with the family to make sure that we can support them in the best way possible.”

Content is on a mission to break the school-to-prison pipeline. Over the last 15 years, 1,500 students have participated in Children of Promise. Less than 10 have been involved in the criminal justice system.

The scholars are allowed to remain in the program even after their parents return from prison. Several alumni have become employees of Children of Promise.
The Brooklyn office of Children of Promise is in Bed Stuy. For more information, check out www.cpnyc.org