Session 9th of April 2014, Prison Sangonera, Murcia

testimonial - Lise, volunteer from Denmark

''So today was my first time in the prison and actually my first time in any prison. When arriving at the place, I immediately could relate it to my idea of a prison, based on what I’ve seen in movies. The fence, the tall walls, the barbed wire and the bars on the windows and the doors was some of the things that lived up to my ideá of a prison. Also the fact that the workers sitting behind desks and opening automatic doors for you, letting you into one room after another was another thing that made me feel controlled by others.

When we came into the area where the inmates were, I noticed that a lot of them were looking – almost staring – at us, which was a thing that I had been warned about before. Anyway I consider it somewhat understandable, that when a pale, blue-eyed, blonde girl comes into a bunch of latino guys, they will show some kind of interest. However none of them made any uncomfortable comments or similar, which I actually had been expecting.

Concluding, the workshop went good and I thought that the guys had a good and positive attitute towards the workshop. They seemd motivated, which also was very motivating to us. ''

FICHA DE SEGUIMIENTO

PROYECTO volare, volare …

FECHA SESIÓN:	9 of April 2014 (17:00 – 19:00)
FACILITADORES:	Ina Lolescu, Lise Johansen, Nicolas Delrieu
DESCRIPCIÓN DE LA SESIÓN
Timetable planned : - Summary of previous sessions - 15 min - World map – 25 min - Up and down – 40 min - Closing y evaluation  - 5 min Participants: Only 4 participants today Activities:  We started out reviewing the previous workshops they had been doing and in this way Lise was able to see which acitivities they had been doing. After that, Lise and Nico did an activity where we all had to put a post-it with our name on a map to demonstrate where we come from. At the same time, we imagined the room as our planet, choosing where was the North, South, … and puting ourselves in each part of the world. After that we had to put another post-it of a different color on the location where we had some origin from and in the end another post-it with a different color on the place we would like to go. Following, Nico did another activity where he would say some words, e.g. ”down”, ”left”, ”behind”, and we had to put our arms in these directions. We asked ourselves from where we knew these words and how we learned them (in school, with parents, in prison...) . However after that the meaning of the words changed, so e.g. up would mean left, and left would mean down. We were given one minute to remember the new meaning of the words and after that we did a test to see if we could manage to do it. Of course we couldn’t, except one of the participants. We talked about the difficulty of the task, time pressure, kind of learning and strategies to learn, the observation that we learnt individualy. The next task we were given was to spend 3 minutes in a group trying to remember the new meanings of the words. In the end we found out, that as a group, sharing the task, we did much better with the help from each other. Ina talked about how this was like that in other cultures sometimes the signs you already know have a different meaning, and that you have yo reset your brain on this new meaning. Evaluation of the session : We did it with the poster of evaluation drawing faces and with a ‘word of the day’. All the participants put smiles.  J Sharing that it was interesting and diverting, also that “the time pass faster with these sessions”. Room : We did the session in the school-room.
INCIDENCES
Only 4 (!!) inmates showed up today, which was a bit disappointing. For that we started late, waiting for the people. It seemed like some of them had some other things they had to do today but not all of them, so it remained a bit of a mystery why so few people came today. Some of them had to see judges, other to participate to a training of electricity. The warm weather seems to be a factor of demotivation. Some of the ones who didn't participate came at the end to apologize and talk with Ina who works with them since the beggining. Ina tried to make it clear for the ones that did show up, that we came here to do activities with them that we had spent time on preparing, and that if nobody were going to show up there really wasn’t any point of all of it. This they understood and promised to let the other inmates know.