Graduation season kicks off at Kolbe
Graduation ceremonies for schools are coming up in the weeks ahead, but at the Ashcroft Rehabilitation Centre at Hattieville, a group of inmates had an early graduation. The seventy-two inmates received certificates for completing the rehabilitation program offered by the Kolbe Foundation. Duane Moody was on hand for the ceremonies.
Duane Moody, Reporting
At every graduation ceremony, there are the usual speeches from valedictorians, salutatorians and more and the event today was no different. It had all the trappings of an auspicious occasion and while some of the inmates will be leaving their cells, others will remain and become facilitators of the program.
Duane Moody
“When they are finished from here, what is it that is expected of them as graduates of this program?”
Meliton Auil, C.E.O., Kolbe Foundation
“This is just the beginning of inmates’ rehabilitation. We don’t see this as the end, this is just the beginning. Some inmates will go home today because they have earned their parole or their remission. That came and it was specific that they had to wait until they graduated. Some inmates will stay here and be facilitators for the incoming generation—the eleventh generation which starts next month. Other inmates will go back into the general population and we hope that we can use their services as facilitators or workers within the entire prison system.”
Two inmates who will remain incarcerated including, the valedictorian, say the program has helped them to become better persons.
Chester Noralez, Inmate
“It was rough at first because the amount of frustration and same inmates like yourself telling you what to do and when to bathe and when fi eat and when to use to the bathroom and when to get up early in the morning; it was challenging for me because I was a person from since I was small I like to do what I want on my own. But since I come to the program and thing, I learn to think about my thinking and respect myself before I could respect another human being. And the program is really good mein because it is a lot of discipline.”
Jeff Dawson Jr., Valedictorian, Ashcroft Rehabilitation Program
“I have to make a change within myself that I am not getting any younger, that a lot of people out there look up to me and I have to make a change within myself and maybe by me making a change, they will follow my example because I’m thirty-nine years old going on to forty this year and it’s been a struggle all my life, with liquor, with marijuana but now I know within myself that I have made that first step. And if test come when I go out there into society that I have to show—I have to prove myself.”
Ernest Woods, who has been sentenced twice for handling stolen goods, will be released from prison.
Ernest Woods, Released
“Well, I find myself going—will be integrated back into society, hopefully that I am practice whatsoever I achieve—what I have learned in this program what I have learned so that I can keep my head up high. First thing I gotta do is I got to find myself a work.”
C.E.O. of the Kolbe Foundation, Meliton Auil says that the program is nine hundred hours of intense rehabilitation over the course of three months.
Meliton Auil
“You are looking at twelve, thirteen hour days. It is based on the twelve step alcohol anonymous program. They’re also thought life skills, introduction to spiritual awareness, the criminal thinking. It’s a well rounded rehabilitation effort that we do here. How was it made possible? Through the hard work of the facilitators here, the Government of Belize who pays the bulk of the bills here and of course, the person who planted the original seed here Lord Michael Ashcroft, who made the donation of a quarter million dollars to build this facility.”
The eleventh intake into the program will start in May. Duane Moody, Reporting for News Five.
