Hope for the Future

She could see they were in trouble.  Day after day, Dr. Olga Clarke watched the teenage boys drop their girlfriends off at school and drive away to drink, take drugs and sometimes steal from local shops.  As the Assistant Director of Ministry Education, Olga was moved to help these young people, who were clearly headed down a dangerous path.  The students she encountered at the College of the Bahamas were receiving support and encouragement on a daily basis, but who would help the kids who had left school only to become ensnared in the trap of crime and its consequences?

So Olga decided to become involved in prison ministry.  “I would have the opportunity to let them know that God has a personalized blueprint for each one of them and that they can enjoy a lifestyle of blessings and still receive a good education,” she says of her decision to regularly visit the kids in prison.  Eventually, Olga became the Executive Director of Prison Fellowship Bahamas and now she and PF endeavour to reach the ever increasing number of young people whose futures have been put on hold by a prison sentence.

Youth detention is a serious problem in the Bahamas and the general rate of imprisonment continues to climb.  Recidivism is also an issue, as more than two out of every three inmates in Her Majesty‘s Prison have been in prison before.  Many kids drop out of school, eventually find themselves in prison and upon release they discover that their lack of education and job skills leaves them unfit for most available jobs.  Eventually, they repeat their earlier mistakes and head back to prison.

PF is helping prisoners and ex-prisoners have a better future.  One of their successful new programmes is called the “Youth Arm of PF Bahamas,” which serves to involve young people in the community in this effort to help the youth in prison.  “The majority of the prisoners in the Bahamas are young people, so we have recruited young people in their 20s and 30s to reach out to these other young people in prison,” explains Olga.

The youth initiative has been very successful and PF recently held a special ceremony to induct the young volunteers into the ministry.  Currently, 35 young people are volunteers in PF‘s Youth Arm.  Vanrey Sweeting, a former teacher, leads PF‘s Youth Arm and prepares the volunteers for their encounters in the prison.  PF plans to eventually offer education classes in math and English to the incarcerated youth to help prepare them for release.  “And we will explore the abilities and talents of these individuals and help develop those gifts so that the youth may be able to maximize their potential,” adds Vanrey.

In order to further address the problem of recidivism, PF Bahamas has partnered with the Lyford Cay Foundation to build a halfway house for former prisoners where they can live for one year to learn job skills and receive counselling and support.  PF also helps the residents find jobs and a place to live when they‘re ready to leave the home. 

Together with the support of the community, PF Bahamas is helping open new doors of opportunity for young people who thought their future would hold for them only crime and prison.