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Dear Madam/Sir, Young in Prison (YiP) is a Dutch based organisation that creates and implements cultural-educational workshops for children from 14-18 years old who are imprisoned. At the moment YiP is working in Colombia, Surinam and South Africa, where the situation for children in prison is troublesome. In Cape Town YiP has been working with the youth in Pollsmoor for four years now. A library has been built in the youth section and sport and cultural projects have been executed by locally appointed staff and volunteers from overseas. For the year 2006YiP developed a reintegration program. Instead of many individual projects, three projects were joined to ensure continuity for the participants and to offer better rehabilitation. The program started with a poetry project, followed by a radio project and is now finishing off with post release care up to three months after the child is released. For the radio project we were lucky to get in contact with Shahieda Jansen with who we have been working from July until December 2006. Our first impression of Shahieda Jansen was that she was very precise. She wanted to know exactly what was expected from her. After exchanging views on what was most necessary for the imprisoned youth we have structured the radio project into life skill workshops that uses radio to empower and give voice to these often very traumatised children. In practise this meant that Shahieda would be working with the youngsters for some months, creating a sense of trust and a strong group feeling. After this she would touch upon three subjects: the life before, during and after imprisonment. These themes would be discussed under the guidance of Shahieda, after which they would be recorded by professional radio producers. Our experience with Shahieda Jansen was a very pleasant one. She has the ability to work with very diverse characters. The work in prison is not only with prisoners, but also with the prison as an institution and our organisation. Shahieda managed to maintain good contact with all three of these connections. To work in prison one has to be very flexible and innovative. Luckily Shahieda has these abilities which made the radio project a great success. Of course the most important thing was that the project had an effect on it’s participants. During the presentation of their work, I have seen that this was the case. The youngsters were very fond of Shahieda and appreciated it so much that somebody cared about their situation and tried to teach them something. After the presentation was finished I received a letter of one of the participants. He asked me to continue this project because he felt that if he could change, he would be able to influence other people as well, creating a flow of positive development. This stimulates us as an organisation to continue our projects, in which hopefully Shahieda Jansen will still be involved in the future. Kindly regards, Suzanne Bessem |
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