“If you get lost in the pages of a book you can go anywhere. That’s especially true for young people that face critical hardships. Literacy can be part of a comprehensive program to help youth improve their lives, even if they are incarcerated, even when they are threatened by a global pandemic.”
Renata Hannans is giving hope to young people who are locked in the criminal justice system.
She launched P.S. Never Give Up Hope, Inc. in 2013 to address high rates of juvenile crime and recidivism, taking particular note of the fact that 85 percent of young offenders have some level of reading deficiency. It’s why literacy is central to her outreach efforts.
Renata formerly worked as a case manager guiding at-risk high school students. She wrote a book, P.S. Never Give Up Hope, that documented the lives of young people serving harsh sentences in Florida prisons, hoping to deter others from making the same mistakes. She launched her nonprofit of the same name to help incarcerated young people see beyond their immediate circumstances.
In 2015 Renata was named the winner of the United Way of Northeast Florida’s Sherwood Smith Children’s Champion Award. In 2016, she was chosen as a Florida Black Pages Top 20 under 40. In 2017, she partnered with a local judge to start a courthouse library, so that children could read a book and write a report in lieu of community services. In 2020 Renata was awarded the Prestige Award by Literacy Pros of Jacksonville as well as the Peace in the Pages award presented by Read USA. She is a proud graduate of Jean Ribault Senior High and holds a B.S. in social science from Jacksonville University.
Organization
P.S. Never Give Up Hope, Inc., Jacksonville, FL
Area of Focus
Incarcerated youth
Fellowship Project
Expand an outreach program that improves the lives an outlook for teens who have been incarcerated, with an interconnected line up of literacy, meditation, behavioral intervention and counseling efforts that target both young women and men.