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[NOTE: This article originally appeared in "The Magistrate" (magazine,) UK. It is reprinted with the author's permission. --Ed.]
THE INSIDE OUT TRUST - The Inside Out Trust sets up projects inside prisons which aim to provide real skills for real work, and simultaneously benefit needy people all over the world. Increasingly the Trust is linking its projects with opportunities for people in prison to gain accreditation in basic and key skills, vital if they are to be able to find employment after release.
Something like 70% of all the people in our prisons have problems with literacy and numeracy which means that over 90% of jobs are not open to them.
Every project needs a network of people and organisations to work together, in order that it will succeed. The story of Manikandam neatly illustrates this.
Elizabeth Herridge, the wife of the Deputy High Commissioner in Chennai (Madras), supports the work of an orphanage for severely disabled children in Southern India. Most of the children either crawl or have to be carried around. Many spend years sitting alone at home whilst their families go out to work. There was until recently no alternative.
Elizabeth heard about the Inside Out Trust from a colleague and e-mailed from Chennai to ask if we could provide a wheelchair for a severely disabled seven year-old boy named Manikandam.
We asked her to come to see us when she was on home leave and, when she did, we told her that she could have a plane-load [of wheelchairs] on the basis that just as much administration was involved in sending one as a hundred! She then visited the project team of staff and prisoners in HMP Garth, near Preston, and they offered to design and build a specially supportive small chair for Manikandam himself.
Getting a hundred wheelchairs to India was the next challenge but British Airways came up trumps and agreed to transport the whole consignment entirely free of charge . and with them went David Kellett, the prison officer instructor who teaches the team in HMP Garth -- travelling at his own expense -- to work with the team who would distribute the wheelchairs. He took his video camera to record the boy receiving his wheelchair so that his prisoner team could see the end product of all their dedicated work. The effect on them is profound. Maybe for some of the team it is the first time they have been thanked and praised and may help them to achieve a more positive life after release..
This project absolutely encapsulates everything that we aim for and stand for.
Margaret Carey
Director
Inside Out Trust
55 High Street
Hurstpierpoint, West Sussex BN6 9TT
