A quarterly address from NRCCFI Director, Ann Adalist-Estrin.
Winter 2009/10
In the midst of the holiday season and all the searching and shopping and preparing, we sometimes become focused more on the gifts and not on the people we buy them for. At this time of year, I am often reminded of O. Henry’s short story, The Gift of the Magi.
In the story, the wife cuts off all of her hair to buy a chain for her husband’s pocket watch, but the husband has sold his pocket watch to buy his wife a barrette for her hair. In the end, the gifts they gave to each other, for which they sacrificed their own needs, were truly gifts.
Many organizations will be asking for gifts at this time of year and we are no different.
We are asking you to consider making a gift to the NRCCFI/FCN in support of our work providing support and resources to those that serve the children and families of the incarcerated.
Most of you who are reading this are or work with those directly impacted by incarceration. Families of the incarcerated and those that provide services to them know, all too well, the feelings raised by O. Henry’s story. Caregivers make agonizing choices – to pay the bills, have some gifts for the children, or go to the prison to visit over the holiday. Incarcerated parents struggle with what to ask relatives or church volunteers to buy for a child that is 5 years older than the last time they were together. Service providers deferring paychecks so that there can be a holiday party or spending ever increasing hours away from their own families to finish the work without having to cut programs. We are all trying to know what others need and make sacrifices in order to give.
The NRCCFI/FCN provides support for those struggling to provide. Many of our services are free. The website for example receives 170,000 visits a year and offers an ever changing array of information and resources, research, recommendations and best practices from the field. These resources help practitioners in their work. For some of our other services and products, such as the quarterly reports, there are fees. However, these fees cover only a fraction of the costs of producing the quality services and materials that we provide.
A gift to the NRCCFI/FCN will be valuable both because of the care with which you give it and in its usefulness to you and to the families of the incarcerated. A gift to the NRCCFI/FCN will help to keep our web site and other resources available to you. It will also help us to:
- Produce NRCCFI Quarterly Reports
- Provide scholarships for NRCCFI trainings for formerly incarcerated parents and caregivers of children of the incarcerated
- Offer the Speakers Bureau, which trains adult children of the incarcerated to speak out and advocate for policy reform
- Support general operating expenses for the web site and maintenance of the Resource Center
And when you give a gift to the NRCCFI/FCN, the IRS will do its small part in gift giving too: by making your full gift tax deductible. Please take a moment to give by going to our Donate link.
If our web site or other resources have been a gift to you in talking to children or families, planning programs, advertising, staff training or your own fund raising, please consider making a gift to us this holiday season.
Ann Adalist-Estrin
Director, NRCCFI
December 2009
Read past reflections here.
