The U.S. Department of Education awarded approximately $200,000 under this grant in 1996 for a 24-month period to the Builders for the Family and Youth parent agency of the Children's Center at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility.

The program contained a required six-month adult literacy program which used a research-based curriculum; daily parenting modules on early childhood development, parenting issues, and children's literacy; and a complementary child literacy curriculum. These activities contributed to the Center's unified approach toward adult and child literacy, which maintains that reading is fundamental to all future learning, parents are a child's primary and most influential teacher, and children must be prepared to enter school.

The program also used its already existing education and vocational programs to teach literacy in contexts that enable participants to develop marketable skills such as printing, cosmetology, horticulture, and building maintenance.