LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Here's a disturbing fact: 70 percent of those children are likely to wind up in prison themselves. The program here in Louisville designed to change that is Y-NOW of the YMCA.

We can all learn a lot from the children of prisoners and the people dedicated to showing them a better way.

There are 55,000 men and women in Kentucky prisons. And for nearly all of them, somewhere, there is  -- a child.

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These are children of prisoners: 21 middle schoolers in a YMCA program designed to put their lives on a different path.

Five brave youth agreed to sit with me to talk about how their lives are affected by a parent in prison. When Sabra came here, she was hurting and hurting herself. “Since I was hurt --yeah.  I wanted to hurt myself.”

During our conversation, the reasons for the pain are revealed: “He tried to sell me out for drugs [until] I called my mom.”

That was the last time Sabra saw her father. 

There's Dylan, ripped apart by the father/son relationship he doesn't have.

“He probably don't even know what school I go to,” Dylan says. “I just want to talk to him.”

Over the airwaves, Dylan tries to reach his dad: “I wanted to let my daddy see me.”

Along with the pain is fear for their own future: “I'm like afraid that I might end up like him or something,” says Dylan – a very realistic fear according to that startling statistic.

What's predictable is 70 percent of them will one day get incarcerated themselves.

“Sometimes they feel like they played a role, if they had been a better kid, if only they had something, the parent would choose me over whatever they chose,” says Y-NOW’s Rebecca Hentz.

For a full year, the kids follow a long list of rules. It's 100 percent participation -- daylong meetings with honest, heart wrenching conversations.

“It's so hard for them to be in that room -- that they will hide under their hoodie. I tease them. I'll pull the hoodie back.”

Rebecca pulls back that armor to exorcise the pain.  As the sign at the front of the meeting room says, “hurt people hurt people.”

And the hurt doesn't end when the prison doors open.

“Every other time he got out of jail, he went to go see all his other kids. I'm the only one he didn't come check on,” says Tony. But Tony says the program is helping him move past the pain. “It's not my fault he's in jail. It's his fault.”

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They call it the “Wall of Fame.”

“We don't have a refrigerator but we have a wall of fame...I think that's significant,” says Rebecca Hentz.

It shows significant progress. Better attendance, higher grades -- progress made by children of prisoners. This is their YMCA Y-NOW program, a year of meetings and mentoring designed to help the kids overcome the stigma and  shame of having a parent in prison.

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It helps them overcome the fear that they too will someday be behind bars.

“By the end of the year I want those kids to stand up proud for who they are, what they are and what's possible for them,” says Rebecca.

Paul Rooprai gives Tony guidance in football and for the past several months -- in life. They follow through on those good grades better behavior and positive feelings.

“You talk about it to somebody you can trust and it gets all that stress off your shoulders.

“All of the youth have a lot of anger just to talk about -- so how is your life different of what do you miss now what do you wish you had that you don't have because that parent's not around.

The person who is around is a mentor.

“I feel good because I don't gotta keep it to myself,” Tony says. “I can talk to somebody.”

“That is Micah underneath the shades and the hat there.”

And that is Karen Wolff beside him.

“He's smart, he's intelligent, he's insightful...a bundle of energy,” she says. “So funny.”

And there's a serious side. Micah tells me about his Tourette’s syndrome, and he tells me why his father's not around: “He's never been mean or nothing, just been kinda out of control a little bit.”

One full year of meetings of one-to-one time and being there.

“The most significant learning at the end of the year I hope for the youth -- will be that adult didn't quit on me. The adult kept their word to me,” says Dave Washer of Y-NOW..

Right now, of the 21 children of prisoners in the program, only nine have full-time mentors. The program has a federal grant to continue for three more years.

Without adult mentors, its aim is in jeopardy. The children need that follow-through.

“And when they're making choices that aren't moving them forward, to call them on that,” says Rebecca.

“I'm not so arrogant or egotistical that I think that I am going to save them, because I really don't,” says Karen. “I'm looking to save one.”

And there's that added bonus most mentors come to know: the kid.

“Otherwise I would have never met Tony,” says Paul. “I would have never had the good fortune of meeting him. It's been a really good experience.”