Two buses rolled up to Bayfront Park on Sunday afternoon, and a steady trickle of boys and girls in purple and yellow t-shirts stepped off each one, walking through a tunnel of high-fives and cheers as they headed for a large tent pitched on the shore.
Two buses rolled up to Bayfront Park on Sunday afternoon, and a steady trickle of boys and girls in purple and yellow t-shirts stepped off each one, walking through a tunnel of high-fives and cheers as they headed for a large tent pitched on the shore.
There were 85 kids in all, ranging in age from 7 to 17. They had spent the morning bowling, and the previous day horseback riding at Pa‘ani Ranch. There would be a luau later that night, before the kids returned to their cabins at the Kilauea Military Camp. More than 200 volunteers helped out.
Campers came from around Hawaii Island — mostly Hilo, but also Honokaa and Kona. Some were from Oahu. But they were all there for one reason: to just be kids for a few days.
On the surface this is a straightforward goal, but for the kids at Camp Agape, run by the New Hope Hilo church and now in its third year on the island, it’s not one that necessarily comes easily. Every camper has a parent who is in jail or prison.
There’s no accurate statewide count for how many children have incarcerated parents. That may change soon with the passage of a recent bill in the legislative session, which requires the Department of Public Safety to keep track of incoming offenders who have children, and how old the children are. Data collected is intended to kickstart broader efforts to help the young group.
But in the meantime, services directly addressing this population are lacking. Roy Yamamoto of Pearl City, a former inmate whose daughter was three when he entered prison, founded Camp Agape on Oahu ten years ago.
“God cut me loose,” Yamamoto said. Since then, he said, he’s been “doing everything I could for inmates and their families.” Besides the Big Island program, camps have been established as close by as Maui, and as far away as Arkansas. The program is free for campers, funded by grants and donations.
“Children here have been through the same things,” Yamamoto said. “Having a group like this helps them to realize they’re not the only ones going through this.”
A 2014 study by the University of California- Irvine found that children of inmates are more likely to experience mental health conditions such as ADD/ADHD and anxiety than children who did not have an incarcerated parent. The same study found children of incarcerated parents three times as likely to suffer from depression.
The camp is about “breaking down walls,” said Emma Chong, who oversees Camp Agape’s mentor and junior mentor group. “They’ve been hurt.”
Pastor Charlie Kama of New Hope Hilo worked at the Oahu camp before founding Hawaii Island’s program three years ago. He gets in touch with campers through their parents, whom he meets through the prison ministry. Kama has been a pastor for 15 years and involved with the prison ministry for the past 13.
“When I go in and talk to the inmates, they’re always saying, ‘Would you pray for my children?’” Kama said. “You (the prisoners) are doing time in here, but they’re doing time on the outside.”
Kama himself has been out of prison for 18 years. His children were teenagers when he first went in.
“When I came out of incarceration, I know how it felt, realizing ‘Oh, I hurt my family and my kids,’” he said. “They saw everything that I was doing, and they followed some things I was doing, [like] drugs. They thought it was part of life.”
Camp Agape seeks to show kids that there is more to life, and more to strive for, he continued.
“When they go rock climbing, we encourage them to get to the top,” Kama said. “What we’re saying is that you don’t have to follow your parents who are incarcerated. We’re trying to break that, just trying to find these kids and give them back their future, which was taken from them.”
In Christian theology, agape love refers to the highest form of love, or unconditional love between God and man. The camp t-shirts have five words printed down the side: trust, love, forgiveness, hope, and prayer.
Ashleigh Kahawaiolaa-Daffron’s father has been, as she puts it, “in and out” since she was a toddler. She first attended the camp on Oahu, and now, at age 17, is a junior mentor: a younger face to relate to the campers and let them know they’re loved.
“You tell them that it’s not the end of the world,” she said. “They’ll be your opihi; they’ll be stuck to you.” When she returned home after her first camp, she told her dad she was working on forgiveness.
“It’s for the parents, too,” Kahawaiolaa-Daffron said.
“My son was teaching me how to build relationships,” Kama said.
After camp, there are reunion dinners and followup calls, as mentors and junior members check in on the kids. The goal is to help families begin to build relationships before parents come out of jail, so they don’t have to start from scratch. The effort is far bigger than the church, Kama said: It’s about the community.
“We just want to keep pushing them together, towards a goal in life,” he said.
E-mail Ivy Ashe at iashe@hawaiitribune-herald.com.