2019

St Albans Management Area Teachers Day

Last week Inside-out team member Jacqui Pirzenthal, who is also president of the Rotary Club in Jefferys Bay, hosted a group of teachers from the St Albans Corrections Centre to celebrate Teachers Day. As Jacqui stated below, this special day was organized in recognition of their service, sacrifice and dedication:

“It is nearly impossible for me to use words to do credit to this group of educators. They never fail to leave me feeling humbled, inspired, motivated and HOPEFUL. I have met a number of their students, some of whom have made a lifelong impression on me in terms of their level of rehabilitation and THEIR hope for their own futures. I have listened to how student offenders in their 50s talk with great pride about how well they did in the recent national literacy competition for offenders. Hearing these men tell me “Prison saved me and I never bothered about education before, never went to school. Now I can read and learn. I have a chance now when I am released” hits me in the feels every time”.

We were so grateful that Inside-out could collaborate with Rotary for the day and contribute in a small way to assist Jacqui and the St. Albans Educators in their passion for offender literacy, education and rehabilitation. Thank you again to Jacqui for all her hard work in the Eastern Cape! Since the start of her involvement in the Inside-out Outside-in Books Project in 2017, she has facilitated the donation of well over 1200 books to the St Albans library, as well as the Female Correctional Centre in Port Elizabeth.

Inside-out Call for Sanitary Pad Donations

Inside-Out recently paid a visit to the Kgosi-Mampuru Corrections Centre to celebrate Woman’s Month with the female offenders and through our conversations with the women, we established that one of the issues that the they experience is the supply shortages of sanitary pads. Not having an adequate supply of sanitary pads during a menstrual period presents a hygiene risk and can be a form of humiliation and degradation as well.

Inside-Out is on a mission to assist with provision of additional sanitary pads to the female offenders at Kgosi-Mampuru and calls for support from colleagues and students through donations of sanitary pad packs. This campaign runs until 27 November 2019 and your donations during this period will help Inside-Out achieve its goal of collecting 300 sanitary packs. Those who are interested can drop the pack(s) off in Casey Motsisi’s office in the Department of Psychology. Room 5-119, WMM Building. Alternatively, arrangements for collections can be made with Casey via email motsick@unisa.ac.za or office telephone 012 429 8224.

Please see attached document for more info, and thank you as always for the generous support!

PsySSA Student Division.pdf

Inside-out and PsySSA Student Division Book Collection

On the 14 of August 2019 the Inside-out Books Project joined forces with the PsySSA Students Division on Community Development, to collect books for their Readers Are Leaders campaign:

“In honour of Thatha Madiba and Madiba month, the Student Division is running a “Readers are Leaders” Educational campaign. For the month of July, SD is collecting new and used fiction and non-fiction books in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape. These books will be donated to underprivileged schools and youth care centres.”

Please see attached a report on how we assisted in getting them closer to their target of 1000 books. Should you wish to contribute yourself to the campaign, kindly contact them at psyssastudentblue@gmail.com (Western Cape) or psyssasdcomm@gmail.com (Gauteng/ KZN).

Inside-out Kgoši Mampuru Female Correctional Centre Women's Day

South Africa celebrated Women’s Day on the 9th of August, and so we, as the inside-out team, paid a visit to the female section at Kgoši Mampuru correctional centre to celebrate women’s month. The aim of our visit was to present a workshop to empower women, and addressed the continuous social and economic injustices suffered by women in general. Our audience was encouraged to invest in education and also to show the determination needed to overcome the social and economic challenges faced by women today.

Kgoši Mampuru Female Correctional Centre Women.pdf

Report on the 6th Southern African Psychology Students Conference.pdf

Inside-out at the 6th Southern African Psychology Students Conference

As you know, Unisa and UJ hosted the 6th Southern African Psychology Students Conference last month, and Inside-out was lucky enough to host an entire day stream on all research presentations and roundtable discussions relating to corrections. Our team of Inside-out volunteers presented at the conference, and attached is their report on the event...

Psychology of Women and Equalities Section Annual Conference 2019

Inside-out team member and Unisa PhD graduate, Bianca Parry recently received a special commendation from the British Psychological Society for their 2019 POWES Award for her thesis paper entitled “Pathways and Penalties – Exploring the Intersectional Experiences of Agency among Incarcerated Women in South Africa”. She was invited to present at the Psychology of Women and Equalities Section Annual Conference, and represented Inside-out at the Cumberland Lodge in Windsor in the UK .

POWES2019 Abstract Book V2.pdf

Inside-Out Book Donations to NPO's

Earlier this year we celebrated World Book Day, and as such received an overwhelming response of support and book donations. Last month we decide to share the love by donating surplus and duplicate books to various NPO’s in our area. For more info, please read the attached report compiled by Casey Motsisi.

World Book day celebrations.pdf

Reimaging Justice Event

Join the Incarcerations Network, Centre for Applied Legal Studies and many more stakeholders from across the globe on the 8th of November at WITS University for an afternoon of radically reimaging justice.

Inside-out at the 6th Southern African Students’ Psychology Conference

The 2019 6th Southern African Students’ Psychology Conference hosted by the Department of Psychology at the University of Johannesburg, has once again been a remarkably overwhelming success. The showcase included 3 roundtable discussions, 61 paper presentations, 3 PechaKucha, 8 poster presentations and a symposium, as well as a dedicated Correctional Interest stream on day two, hosted by members on the Inside-out team. We were so proud to be part of such a transformative conference, and look forward to contributing to the 7th in 2021!

Donating Books to St. Albans Library

Last week Inside-out team member Jacqui Pirzenthal delivered the latest load of books to St Albans Correctional Facility in the Eastern Cape. She was fortunate to have been in the company of Gianna Doubell, the Rotary District Governor, who was highly impressed by the Inside-out Outside-in initiative. Thanks again to Jacqui, Mr Colin Plaatjies and the Rotary Club for all the hard work and supporting Inside-out book deliveries in the area!

Losperfontein visit report.pdf

Spelling Bee and Debate at Losperfontein...

Earlier this year, the inside-out team responded to an invitation by the Losperfontein correctional facility to attend a day of fun and activities organized by New Leaf Organization (an initiative established by offenders). This event was endorsed by various stakeholders such as the New Leaf Foundation, Losperfontein correctional facility, UNISA and the Inside-out team, and Mamelodi Sundowns football club. The purpose of this event was manifold but awareness creation and identification of various ways in which to fight drug and substance abuse within the facility was paramount. The event comprised of a number of activities which included a debate and a spelling bee contest between the offenders and members of the inside-out team, poetry, singing and dancing performances.

More can be read about this exciting day in the attached report, compiled by Casey Motsisi...

Inside-Out at Unisa R&I Week 2019

On the 6th of March this year, an interdepartmental collaboration at Unisa held a two hour roundtable discussion with relevant stakeholders that included students, researchers, correctional officers and lecturers, to consider Open Distance e-Learning (ODeL) and research in correctional facilities as an option of sustenance investment towards future academic endeavours.

The outcome of this very important session has been complied into a summary for your perusal, along with a proposed plan moving forward. We are sharing this with all members of the Inside-out community to facilitate a transparent process and look forward to your contributions and suggestions In this regard.

Research Workshop_ODeL_2019 Summary.pdf

Celebrating International Book Day

This week inside-out celebrated International Book Day, with team members and volunteers working together to collect and organise books that were donated by the public for delivery to Correctional Centre libraries across South Africa. Donations of current popular fiction, textbooks and spiritual books, in various South African languages were included, and the hard work was celebrated with a very special cake!

Starting 2019 Right!

After a big and busy year for Inside-out in 2018, we are keeping up the pace with our books project. Inside-out team members Tanya Pieterse and Christina Landman made a welcome festive book donation to the offenders at Zonderwater in December 2018. The books were generously donated by Suzanne Le Roux and made the holidays a little easier to bear for offenders far from their families. 2019 also started on a high note with a generous book donation by Loraine van der Westhuizen from the Department of Afrikaans and Theory of Literature at Unisa. The Inside-out team will be making their first trips to correctional centre libraries soon and welcome her contributions.

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