Two Women, Three Prisons - Part 2: Creativity

We introduced you to Magaly and Mabel in Part 1, here. Now we'd like to tell you a bit more about their creativity and resourcefulness in nurturing Alternatives to Violence Project workshops and participants.

Magaly and Mabel have convinced the prison officials to allow them to hold the workshops in central, "neutral" areas that have less traffic and distractions, so that people from different sections can participate and can focus during the workshops. That's a vast improvement over the original, distracting, hallway locations.

Since there’s no public transportation to the Qalauma and Chonchocoro facilities, Magaly and Mabel have made arrangements to ride along with the police when they go to the prison, to get there for workshops.

In the challenging prison environment, about 40% of workshop participants attend too sporadically to graduate.  Rather than the graduation certificate (printed proof of accomplishments is highly valued in Bolivian culture), Magaly and Mabel give them a letter of thanks, which helps to encourage their full participation in the next workshop.

Magaly’s dream is to establish teams of facilitators in both Qalauma and Chonchocoro prisons, then reach out to others, especially the women’s prison in La Paz.