Friends Reunited and Envisioning Possibilities with Grandir Dignement
Another full day. Hanitra and Elson, who operate our partner organization Elsonhanitra Madagascar Mission (EMM), drove up from Antsirabe for a meeting to sort out details regarding the working partnership between the RCA (U.S. side) and EMM (Madagascar side). (see Our Team). Madame Lalao, a gifted accountant, joined the meeting as she had worked with us last year in Antalaha Prison and her heart remains with the prison kids. She expressed a desire to continue being involved. All will unfold in good time.
We took them out to an Indian restaurant. It was great fun and we enjoyed introducing them to Indian cuisine. I promised to teach Hanitra certain dishes when we stay with them in Antsirabe after a couple of weeks.
The three then headed to the Ministry of Justice to work on getting prison visitation permissions while Bruce and I went to the Grandir Dignement’s main office to meet with Ambre Thomas, the Program Manager of Grandir who happened to be visiting from France https://www.grandirdignement.org/. She is here for a few weeks, and had just come back from Antalaha Prison. Ambre laughed as she told me Karim’s version of how we had met.
“There was a white woman in the prison, waving her arms around, speaking animatedly and getting things done. “
My version was:
“The kids kept saying “Karim this and Karim that. I imagined an Indian nun doing philanthropic work in the children’s section of the prison. When I met this handsome, Middle Eastern looking frenchman, I did a double take.”
The long and short of it, Karim and I have became good friends and together wrote up the proposal to open up a Welcome House (Maison d’accueil) outside of the prison gates for family members to stay for a few days, their travel and living expenses paid for. The Maitresse of the Welcome House briefs the parents about the judicial process, their child’s legal rights, and introduces them to the prison and judicial staff. The program has been going about 6 months and is a grand success. More details are available in the Projects section of this site.
I cannot say enough good about GD. It is a wonderful organization to be connected with. They work in six prisons around Madagascar, their main goal being to enact measures to enable these prisons to come in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child. She told us that as we were speaking, the skills training and re-integration sessions were being held downstairs with kids who had been released. They work in areas such as literacy, nutrition, and legal rights. The program was started by a young volunteer French couple who had lived in Madagascar for 10 years. They started visiting prisons around the Island and were moved to start an organization to help address the unbearable conditions that they witnessed, especially regarding underage prisoners.
Our meeting with Ambre was inspiring and we dreamed of ways we can collaborate more in the future. She loved the Welcome House setup and remarked that not only does this project help the kids, but Onisca, the Welcome House Maitresse, helps the parents through the shame they feel for having a criminal child. We talked about setting up a fund for medical emergencies and dental care for the kids. This will happen soon. According to the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child which Madagascar has signed, underaged detainees and adult detainees are to be kept separately in order to avoid child exploitation. This isn’t happening in the Antalaha prison and she expressed that this is one thing that should be remedied. We also spoke about a new paradigm in mental well-being being implemented in several English prisons and the positive results in terms of lowering recidivism, feelings of depression, anger, anxiety, and increased feelings of social connectedness and well-being, lowering anger levels, all backed up by research. We have been given a grant to introduce this curriculum to any prison population in Madagascar that we choose, and it includes a year of training trainers. Ambre was interested in this possibility and will discuss it further with her team. I gave her the relevant information and a few papers and feel really hopeful after our exciting meeting.
