New Programme Taps Prisoners’ Creativity
PF Netherlands continues to see growth among the prisoner participants in their Sycamore Tree Project® for youth, known as SOS (Spreken over Schuld). One prisoner participant recently noted that it has been difficult to think about the harm he has caused others and the bad choices he’s made, “but, I kept coming to SOS, and now I am glad I did,” he says.
As a follow-up to these courses, PF Netherlands created the “Make-It” programme, which provides juvenile prisoners the opportunity to write letters, compose poems, make cards, or paint pictures for their victims as a way of making amends and showing remorse.
“Many participants of the SOS youth course want to restore the harm they caused, even for crimes they’d never admitted to before,” explains Esther Klaassen, staff member of PF Netherlands. The programme allows the STP participants to express their feelings of guilt and to take responsibility for their actions.
October 2008
This article originally appeared in Prison Fellowship International's Global Link newsletter for October 2008.
