Clara Hickman and I spent the day at HM Guys Marsh Prison in Shaftesbury delivering an Introduction to Community Organising Training Day to 13 prisoners due to be released in the next year. What a fantastic group of guys they were – engaged and enthusiastic throughout the day. The talking photos invoked some emotional conversations and all the prisoners were keen to share the stories behind the photos in the circle section after. Their favourite part of the training was the ‘Power’ section. They really responded well to this session and despite being in prison they really did believe that people have the power and they seemed to understand the importance of power dynamics.

One prisoner told us afterwards
“I enjoyed the whole day – it was inspiring, and it gives us hope and positivity.”
Another said,
“the motivational, encouraging, supportive and friendly facilitators really made me want to participate.” A few of them commented that they couldn’t believe that they could concentrate for so long “in prison the lessons only usually last for 45 minutes…but we managed to focus for the whole day.”

Sandra Seldon from RECOOP who enabled us to deliver the training at Guys Marsh had invited us to attend an opening meeting in the library to meet some of the prisoner’s first back in October, we then spent 2 hours introducing them to the course signing up whichever inmates were keen. Sandra then let us know that we had 13 confirmed participants for the course. She was thrilled with how it had gone
“You were quite a team – rolling out interesting activities with the greatest of ease – while remaining totally responsive to need…..I hope we can repeat the magic in 2019”

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