A/ Conducting Capacity Building Workshop to Prison Officials and justice sectors

PFE provide especial training for prison officials as well as justice sectors officials and builds their capacity in different schemes. To mention some of the areas, human rights concepts, criminal reforming concepts, and conducting capacity building and sensitization training workshop on prisoners’ rights, and the rights of the accused for law enforcement bodies. Alongwith, we also give leadership and management training as well as organize experience sharing visit for justice sector officials. This experience sharing program includes both local and international visiting. PFE has a special program of hastening the process of justice on site by mobilizing mobile courts. This enables to minimize backload files of crimes and render justice on a speedy manner.

Water shortage and lack of sanitary facilities such as latrines, showers and cloth washing troughs is a common and severe problem in the Ethiopian prisons that cause health problems in the prisoners. Different diseases such as Relapsing Fever (RF) that claim lives of prisoners arise from lack of sanitation and water supply in many prisons. In most prisons waste disposals from over flowing septic tanks pollute rivers and the environment causing health problems on prisoners as well as the community down streams. Therefore PFE is involved in building latrines, showers, erecting water tanks and installing water pumps & pipelines etc… in prisons to curve such problems.

C/ Renovation of living quarters/rooms to prisoners

Suffocation is the most common problem in Ethiopian prisons. On average prisoners gets less than 1 square meter space to spend the night. In some prisons like Nazareth, it is common to find some prisoners spending the nights tied up in room columns due to overcrowding. As a result of the crowded living conditions communicable diseases such as TB, Typhus and RF, etc are common in prisons. It is therefore to curve such problems that PFE involves itself in building and/or renovating living quarters in some prisons.

D/ Assist in attainment of prisoner's basic needs:

There is tremendous shortage for basic necessities such as clothing (including warm clothes), medication, nutritious food, education & training (academic & vocational) etc in almost all-Ethiopian prisons. In one case prisoners suffer from paralysis, which is caused by lack of minor medicines such as Vitamin C that could easily be obtained from eating vegetables or purchasing and distributing the tablets at a reasonable price from local markets. To fill the gaps, PFE with its limited capacity has been assisting from the very beginning through facilitating and supplying donations on basic needs, on clothing (including blankets), medicines & medical equipment, educational facilities etc. To realize the various activities, PFE has long years of experience in mobilizing local resources and volunteers (professionals & non- professionals).

E/ Medical treatment to prisoners

One of the program areas that PFE intervenes in prisons is facilitating medical treatment through its volunteer medical doctors and health practitioners. PFE has about 25 local volunteer medical doctors. PFE facilitates volunteer doctors from abroad through its international office. Every year a group of medical doctors and their assistants come to Ethiopia through Global Health Outreach (GHO) and treat many prisoners. PFE has been able to mobilize local volunteer medical team that provided medical treatment to prisoners in the various regions of the country. So far, large number of prisoners has been benefited from the program.

F/ Provision of Skills training to prisoners

According to the Ethiopian penal code, prisons are places of rehabilitation for offenders so that they could be able to lead a decent life once returned to their respective communities. Life skill training would enable prisoners to acquire the skill that could create job, self-employment and income generating opportunities to men & women prisoners while in prison and when released from the prison. To this end, PFE has been working hard to create skills training opportunities in sewing and embroidery, provide sewing machines and establish mini-workshops for prisoners in some prisons.

G/ counseling service to prisoners/Chaplaincy

Prisoners are people apart from the rest of the community that are residing in an environment of a very controlled and high security area. For most of them coping up with the prison environment is a very difficult phenomena that creates stress, anxiety, rage, anger, frustration etc. Therefore, they are people requiring care & counseling in lots of areas. Having considered this, PFE has been providing counseling and psychosocial support to prisoners in various prisons throughout the country via its Chaplains.

H/ Rehabilitation of Prisoners' families and Ex-prisoners

PFE is under preparation to intervene in activities that could help rehabilitate prisoners' families and ex-prisoners through self-helping projects. Although the effort made so far is not enough, various attempts are under trial.

I/ Restorative Justice and reconciliation

It is a program of Reconciling offenders and victims. The most challenging problem for the prisoners in most prisons of the country is the question about the fate of prisoners that were arrested for committing murder and completed their sentence period. They would like to get back to their communities, but the problem is that these people will be attacked or will be vulnerable to revenge from the side of the relatives of the victim. In most cases, these kinds of prisoners will end up being killed. In order to avert this situation, prison fellowship Ethiopia is conducting Action-oriented research in some prisons of the country. It is exchanging views with prison officials, local authorities, elders, the faith community, etc. on possibilities to bring reconciliation between victims and criminal/offenders at grass root level in order to decrease the revenge that might taken on the offenders while released from prison and ultimately reduce the crime rate and the number of prisoners.

K/ creating awareness on prevention of HIV/AIDS in prisons

To control the spread of HIV/AIDS within prisons and to reduce the multiplication of the disease when prisoners are released, the Prison Fellowship Ethiopia (PFE) HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Project aims at increasing the knowledge of prisoners in HIV/AIDS and bring about behavioral changes, and provision of voluntary counseling and testing services to HIV/AIDS suspects and provision of care and support to People Living With HIV/AIDS (PLWHA).

L/ Twinkle of Hope Child Focused Project

Today there are large numbers of children that live in prisons of Ethiopia. These children are not child offender, who are serving their terms of “correction” sentence, but children whose mothers are imprisoned for one reason or another. These children are living in such an environment where people are sent to live in confinement because their only guardians happen to be their mothers or fathers, who is serving prison sentence. When there is no one “outside” to care for them, and when society and government are not able to supply for their needs, the little ones end up serving time behind bars with their mother or father. As a side project, Prison Fellowship Ethiopia is being in progress for prisoner’s children and mothers projects.

M/ Non-formal Basic Education

Out of Ethiopia's population of about 65 million, the majority (85%) live in rural areas. The largest inhabitants are illiterates, the adult population making a good proportion. Part of the solution to economic and social problems is education and this can't be achieved by in-school education only. It is apparent that the majority of the population cannot be expected to participate in learning activities through the existing formal education system. In view of this, Non-formal Adult education (NFAE) has a significant role in providing knowledge and training to individuals so that they could have effective participation in the socio-economic development of the society. Having considered this, PFE has preliminarily planned to facilitate non-formal education in prisons.