BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – WHILE the nation has been recently faced with a wave of violent crimes, the New Birth Gospel Tabernacle Prison Ministry has sent a clear message of hope to the incarcerated individuals at the Her Majesty’s Prison, Basseterre.
The outreach ministry launched its three-week Ceramic and Pottery Workshop in the country’s sole penal facility earlier this week, in an effort to rebuild confidence in convicts and enable them to “face a fresh start after prison”.
Organizer of the programme Sandra Weekes told SKNVibes that the thrust not only extends the group’s main cause of reaching out to prisoners but also focuses on empowering them with the necessary skills to gain meaningful employment after being released.
“What we are doing is expanding our outreach capacity to empower prisoners. There are many persons in there, especially men and so we are trying to see how much we can help them. We are offering them the opportunity to gain a skill in order to be more equipped and confident to face the world when they leave, so that they don’t have to fall back in the same life they had before.
“It is a very timely initiative as we have witnessed so many social ills with our youth getting involved in gang-related violence. There are so many avenues for enhancement offered to persons outside of jail but we want to give those in prison an equal opportunity. Sometimes they may feel as if they are forgotten and rejected, so we want to make it clear that we have not forgotten them but we are opening our hearts to them.”
Weekes informed that the workshop is only the first stage of a full three-phase project geared toward the holistic enhancement of the incarcerated individuals. She added that when the programme comes to an end on February 13, the participants would be awarded a certificate to “give them a sense of completion”.
She acknowledged that it is often a problem for ex-convicts to gain employment, but added that the certificate should be “proof that they are competent in the area of ceramics and pottery”.
