Par­tic­i­pants in the in­au­gur­al Re-In­te­gra­tion Sup­port and Em­pow­er­ment (RISE) project are be­ing en­cour­aged to make the most of the train­ing they have re­ceived over the past few months and con­tin­ue their progress to­wards pro­duc­ing ful­fill­ing lives.

The pi­lot pro­gramme, which tar­gets fe­male in­mates, ex­posed par­tic­i­pants to ther­a­py, trau­ma man­age­ment, vo­ca­tion­al skills and oth­er life skills as part of a dri­ve to pre­vent re­cidi­vism among women.

Dur­ing a grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny at the Prison Sports Grounds and Cul­tur­al Club, Gold­en Grove, Arou­ca, on Wednes­day, Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, Van­dana Mo­hit, praised the par­tic­i­pants for their will­ing­ness to learn and grow with the pro­gramme and hoped the con­tent de­liv­ered in­spired them to think be­yond their cur­rent cir­cum­stances.

She not­ed that while the par­tic­i­pants may have faced se­ri­ous chal­lenges which led to cur­rent cir­cum­stances, their dif­fi­cul­ties did not de­fine their fu­ture.

“This project has cre­at­ed an op­por­tu­ni­ty for in­car­cer­at­ed women and girls to re­flect, to heal and most im­por­tant­ly to grow.

“Many of these women have faced ex­tra­or­di­nary chal­lenges. Some, cir­cum­stances be­yond their con­trol. This pro­gramme gave them a chance to over­come those chal­lenges, to be seen, to be heard and to be be­lieved in.

“These are more than just skills; they are tools for self-de­vel­op­ment and self-em­pow­er­ment. They are steps to­wards dig­ni­ty and in­de­pen­dence.”

Re­flect­ing on the cer­e­mo­ny’s cen­tral theme of Who am I?, Mo­hit said such a ques­tion was thought-pro­vok­ing as it chal­lenged par­tic­i­pants to look with­in and de­cide who they were and what they would like to gain from their ex­pe­ri­ences.

Dur­ing his re­marks, Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, Ryan Ram­cha­ran, de­scribed the pi­lot project as a suc­cess, which not on­ly ben­e­fit­ted the par­tic­i­pants but al­so of­fered valu­able in­sight in de­sign­ing fu­ture ini­tia­tives.

He said such suc­cess was tes­ta­ment to the need for in­ter-agency col­lab­o­ra­tion and sus­tained in­vest­ment in pro­grammes for re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

Par­tic­i­pant Vik­ki Boodram de­liv­ered her tes­ti­mo­ny, where she thanked the min­istry, Prison Ser­vice and co-or­di­na­tors for their ded­i­ca­tion to not on­ly de­liv­er­ing the course ma­te­r­i­al but al­so in help­ing nur­ture the de­vel­op­ment of fel­low par­tic­i­pants.

Boodram, who was ar­rest­ed in 2016 on 148 fraud charges against her, said she was par­tic­u­lar­ly grate­ful for the work of trau­ma spe­cial­ist Natasha Au­gus­tine.

“It al­lows par­tic­i­pants to get the chance to come face-to-face with cer­tain harsh re­al­i­ties and giv­en the tools to aid in the men­tal and emo­tion­al process, as we did.

The cer­e­mo­ny al­so in­clud­ed a fash­ion show, which fea­tured cre­ations de­signed and sewn by the par­tic­i­pants dur­ing the project.