{"id":43577,"date":"2026-09-28T13:28:32","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T17:28:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=43577"},"modified":"2026-09-28T13:39:59","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T17:39:59","slug":"wyff-highlights-program-that-builds-connections-between-incarcerated-parents-and-their-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wyff-highlights-program-that-builds-connections-between-incarcerated-parents-and-their-children\/","title":{"rendered":"WYFF highlights program that builds connections between incarcerated parents and their children"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Riley&#8217;s Readers, a program crafted by Furman University&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/riley\/\">Riley Institute<\/a> Fellows, was featured on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wyff4.com\/article\/rileys-readers-incarcerated-father-books\/73896079\">WYFF News 4<\/a>. Riley&#8217;s Readers enables incarcerated parents to record their voices as they read stories to their children. The recordable books are then shared with the inmates&#8217; children to create a connection that wouldn&#8217;t otherwise exist. Incarcerated parents are encouraged to include personal messages in addition to the storytelling. One father recorded, &#8216;&#8221;I love you. I just want you to know how amazing you are and how cool this is that I get to tell you that in a book.\u201d&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>As of 2023, about 500 books had been recorded and shared with children since the program was launched in 2016 by a cohort of The Riley Institute&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/riley\/diversity-strategies\/diversity-leaders-initiative\/\">Diversity Leaders Initiative<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fellows of The Riley Institute&#8217;s Diversity Leaders Initiative create a program that enables parents to include their voices on recordable storybooks for their children. WYFF visits a Spartanburg correctional facility where connections are being made.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":257,"featured_media":43584,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6,29,3508],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-centers-and-institutes","category-in-the-news","category-riley-institute","category-wyff-news-4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/257"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43577"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43588,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43577\/revisions\/43588"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}