Supporting Hands of Mentor
Prison Spiritual Care ·Czechia
About this project
<p>Prison Spiritual Care has prepared the Supporting Hands of Mentor project to develop a new service that it could offer to prisoners preparing for release to help them return to normal life. The Mentoring program will be available in 4 prisons in the Czech Republic (Vinařice, Odolov, Olomouc, Jiřice) to more than 120 prisoners, to whom dozens of mentors and professionals will work during the project.</p> <p>The purpose of the project is to focus on clients in predefined areas in order to enable them to successfully reintegrate into the mainstream environment. The areas we focus on within the program are - housing, employment, family relationships, management, spiritual area and mental area.</p> <p>Client participation in the program is voluntary and free. We consider the individual approach and personal level of the mentor's relationship with the client to be important. After the end of the project, we want to use the concept for follow-up activities implemented, for example, through an accredited volunteer program.</p>
Bilateral cooperation results
Partnership cooperation was a crucial part of the project's success. The key partner was the Norwegian organization Church of Norway, with which bilateral cooperation was implemented. Cooperation with the partner brought inspiration and methodological support in the first phase in the creation of key project documents. An important aspect of cooperation was the opportunity to consult not only the theoretical structure of the project, but also its implementation part. During two visits to Norway, we were able to compare the project plan with practice in Norwegian prisons and at the same time consult practical issues with individual workers on the Norwegian side. The second meeting then served for validation and feedback within the implementation of project activities, but also for planning the targeting of outputs and their use after the project's completion within selected Czech prisons. Cooperation with the partner Church of Norway brought several important results. Exchange visits to Norway allowed the Czech team to learn about innovative approaches to working with prisoners, which were the inspiration for the implementation of some elements into the Czech mentoring programme. The sharing of know-how led to a deeper understanding of effective resocialization methods and strengthened the competences of Czech mentors, especially in the area of working with prisoners in the pre-release phase. A concrete outcome of the cooperation is, for example, the "Silent Ward".
Project partners
- Church of Norway Donor project partner· Norway
- Ecce Homo Sternberk Project partner· Czechia