Bedtimes Stories connects incarcerated parents and their children through the power of reading. The program simulates for the child the experience of reading together with their separated parent.

How it works: Within the jail, the inmate makes an audio recording of themselves reading a children’s book. That recording is uploaded to the Bedtime Stories cloud server. Outside the jail at home, the child accesses the secure recording with the Bedtime Stories app to hear their parent read a book for them just as if they are side by side.

When the child hovers a smartphone over the pages of the book’s physical copy, the parent’s voice comes to life reading the book, page by page. In addition, the parent can read special messages for their child, further simulating the read-together experience.

Currently there are 80 children’s books available on the app through the Chicago Public Library.

Bedtime Stories is a program that connects incarcerated parents and their children together through the power of reading. Each incarcerated parent records a story, and that audio is uploaded to the Bedtime Stories app. No two audio files are the same. Each audio file is unique to the child experiencing the story and is dependent on the book being read by the incarcerated parent.

The audio experience simulates a parent reading to their child like they are right beside them.

Walmart was founded on the value of equitable opportunity. Racial equity is critical to their mission and their business. Incarceration in the US disproportionately affects people of color and creates a cycle of incarceration.

There are over 2 million people incarcerated in the US, creating 2.7 million unintended victims of the criminal justice system - the children. The problem is pervasive, with 1 in 28 children in the US having a parent behind bars.

The children of the incarcerated face tremendous adversity from the absence of the parental figure - anxiety, depression and academic and literacy issues. Childhood illiteracy is an indicator of future incarceration and it’s reported that 66% of children who cannot read by the end of 4th grade will end up in jail or on welfare.

With Bedtime Stories, we nurture bonds through books and literacy to help break the cycle of generational incarceration.