Jade talks honestly about the idea of a drop-in centre in Southampton for released prisoners not having been as successful as hoped, and explains briefly why she thinks this is:

One of the things I have found is that the men I meet upon release do not want to meet up with ex-offenders because they are worried about being tempted to commit crimes again. But they are happy to have coffee with me and meet on a one-to-one. So this is what I continue to do each week spending a full day in and around Southampton and Portsmouth meeting up individually with men who have served time at HMP Winchester. This consists of coffee… and listening to the men talk about how the week has been, the highs and lows. We have a prayer and then arrange to meet again in a fortnight and keep in contact via texts and phone calls. Through meeting with the men I believe that they are encouraged to keep walking with Jesus and stay away from the temptation of crime.

Jade has also been encouraged by those Mothers’ Union groups that have hosted her as a speaker, and the way that those who came wanted to know how their churches can support men who go along to church. She says:

I always say to churches treat visitors with love and respect and no matter what their background make them feel welcome. Not all men will identify themselves as men who have served time in prison, but that means that each person is treated with the Christian love that God tells us to treat everyone to we meet.

At least two Mothers’ Union members from the Diocese of Winchester hope to attend the next Presentation Day on the SORI course that Jade runs, which starts on Monday 17th May. You can find out more here about this Restorative Justice scheme – please pray for this important work.

Please also continue to pray for

• all the men who have served time at HMP Winchester and are now trying to settle back into the community;
• the Chaplaincy team and all those involved in selecting a new chaplain to head the team.

If you think you could become part of the Mothers’ Union ministry at HMP Winchester which happens on the first Sunday of each month among those men awaiting release, please contact us via the link on the bottom right of your screen. For insurance reasons you will need to be (or become) a Mothers’ Union member.

We have just completed our 11th SORI programme. We had nine men attend and it was a rather challenging week. It is the first time we have run a group where the majority of men are in for drug dealing. This is one of the crimes where it can be hard for the offender to see his victims – in his eyes he thinks he is just supplying drugs to drug users. During the week we were able to encourage them to see the wider picture and it was a time of growth for both the men and for the tutors.

On the Thursday afternoon the men were able to express their feelings through letters they had written to their victims and also to their own families.

We have now seen 108 men go through the SORI programme. I currently have 5 men in the community who have been through the course. I often get text messages from them telling me that they have been tempted to re-offend and then they remember what they did on the SORI programme and how they don’t want to make any more victims, and so they walk away from certain situations.

This is such an encouragement to me and I praise God for the opportunity to continue with the SORI Programme and to see men’s lives changed.

Jade is speaking at St Peter’s Church Yateley on Tuesday 27th April at 7.30pm – everyone is welcome.

The North Hampshire Child Contact Centre has been initiated by, and the management committee is made up of, members from the North Hampshire Downs Mothers’ Union. They live in the villages just outside Basingstoke and the Child Contact Centre is being held at Hook near M3 J5 and the mainline train between Basingstoke and Fleet. Both Basingstoke and Fleet have child contact centres with waiting lists.

The volunteers to support the project have come from the village church congregations and from local school connections. This has enabled outreach by Mothers’ Union members to other supporters, and from the whole community (led by the Mothers’ Union) to the communities across the area.

The Child Contact Centre’s sole purpose is to enable parents, and sometimes grandparents, to rebuild relationships with children residing with estranged former partners. Contact is usually ordered by the courts. Those who have volunteered to help with sessions have been specially trained to facilitate resident parents who are reluctant about letting estranged partners have access to their children, and also care for children who may be very torn over which parent to please.

The North Hampshire Child Contact Centre would welcome your prayers for its volunteers and clients as it starts providing this vital and much needed service to the local community.

More information about how the project has been set up will be available on this website soon, and in the summer edition of our Diocesan Newsletter ‘Archway’.

In her prayer letter this month Jade shares news of talks she’s been able to give to Year11 pupils in a Winchester school:

I was very encouraged by the questions that the young people asked me, to do with the prison and also the rehabilitation of ex-offenders…The second time I took a set of prison clothes and all the things that the men get given on arrival. I found that having some real life prison property with me enabled the young people to interact a bit more.

Jade also talks about the 6-week trial of an ex-offenders drop in, currently being run from the Weston Healthcare Centre in Southampton. They may then try out another area in which they know ex-offenders are living, as they seek to discern which is the best venue.

Among all this, and her continued commitments to prisoners inside, Jade continues to be able to support men who have been released, some of whom are attending churches. Currently this sees her weekly in Portsmouth supporting a group there who need her time one-to-one to help them deal with personal issues as she seeks to help them avoid the temptations of returning to a life of crime.

This month Jade is particularly asking our prayers for:

• the next SORI programme (a week-long restorative justice course Supporting Offenders through Restoration Inside) will start on 21st March with the presentation afternoon on Thursday 25th March in front of invited guests;
• the whole chaplaincy team as the senior chaplain moves towards retirement in June;
• the drop-in centre at Weston and the volunteers who are making themselves available to be their for ex-offenders each week;
• men back in the community trying to live crime free lives;
• that God will continue to bless the ministry and all those men who have made a commitment to God in the past, or who will in the future.

If you are interested in knowing more about Jade’s ministry as a Community Prison Chaplain through the Church Army/Fresh Expression, please “Contact Us” through the link bottom right of this screen and we will pass your message on.

If you are reading this web-page because you are interested to learn more about these diocese, you are particularly welcome. Once you’ve read the links available, please click on the word ‘comment’ and tell us if you found them helpful, interesting, and also where you are from! We’d love to hear from you.

Information about project work (including our Family Holiday scheme), events and activities among Mothers’ Union members in the Diocese of Winchester can be viewed by clicking the other link pages and ‘tags’ on the top and left of your screen.

During the last few days we have posted information about three of the Diocese to whom Winchester is linked. Each can be found by scrolling down the postings on this ‘home-page’ or by clicking the ‘tag’ links. There is further background information on each via the ‘International’ heading at the top of your screen.

Muhabura, situated in Southern Uganda, is the last to be featured. In 2009 we became aware that, despite the drought conditions the region was experiencing, Mothers’ Union members were helping many refugees displaced from the Democratic Republic of Congo. This was supported by two donations from the Mothers’ Union Relief Fund, which operates to help members in the relief work they undertake in their local communities. Information from Mothers’ Union head office suggests that Muhabura members continue to care for refugees from D R Congo.

Whether you are a Mothers’ Union member, or just interested in who we are and what we do, may God bless you as you journey through life with him.

Mothers’ Union has families of Diocese stretching across the world who pray for each other regularly, and who collectively form a ‘Wave of Prayer’. One of Winchester’s permanent links is with Kajo-Keji in Southern Sudan, and from tomorrow (January 21st) they and their partner diocese of Kitgum and Muhabura (in Uganda) and Masasi (in Tanzania) will be at the centre of all Mothers’ Union prayers around the world.

As one of the key agencies from the Church involved in bringing humanitarian and development assistance to the people of Sudan, Mothers’ Union has spoken out to lend support to Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul, from the Episcopal Church of the Sudan, calling for urgent international support for efforts to maintain the fragile Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). The CPA was signed in 2005 ending a long and devastating civil war, but violence is now on the increase across the region.

[Full details of the situation and issues surrounding it can be found among recent Chatham House papers, and recent speeches by Archbishop Rowan Williams, and Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul can be downloaded from the Archbishops website.]

A Mothers' Union literacy group in Southern Sudan

Mothers’ Union has a membership of 15,000 women in Sudan, and runs an extensive Literacy & Development programme (MULDP) in the country, working closely with the Episcopal Church of the Sudan. The CPA has enabled Mothers’ Union Sudan’s Literacy Trainers to extend the programme to communities in Southern Sudan who were previously isolated through conflict. This progress is at risk should the fragile peace not be protected.

Naomi Herbert, Senior Programme Officer for Mothers’ Union said “Before the CPA our development programme couldn’t reach out of the controlled area of Juba and the areas in the North. Since the CPA our volunteers have brought the programme into isolated and previously inaccessible interior regions. Communities are now engaging in new businesses, roads enable markets to be accessible, more food is available, and people have better access to healthcare and natal facilities. All efforts need to be made by governments and agencies to facilitate open dialogue between north and south on key issues of wealth sharing, so that the people of the South are not plunged in to a conflict over resources at a time when peace is making such a difference to the lives of ordinary women, men and children across Sudan.”

However, there are other issues that specifically affect Kajo-Keji. The Diocese of Kajo-Keji has not yet been able to introduce and implement the MULDP. Funding provided by Mothers’ Union for the programme (which also operates in Burundi and Malawi ) used to be matched by funding from Comic Relief for the project, but that source is now exhausted. The challenge is therefore to find funding for the Mothers’ Union’s Literacy and Development Programme that will allow it to continue in the areas it has already reached, and specifically to expand into regions like Kajo-Keji where it would prove equally effective.

Jade, the Church Army Community Chaplain at HMP Winchester has also given us her prayer letter for December (having missed writting one in November because of the dreaded swine-flu).

Jade has recently spoken at Holy Trinity, Brompton speaking about the real help that men and women leaving prison get – which is not very much. She is sad that many return to prison through circumstances that include lack of funds and housing difficulties. With her was ex-offender Dan T, now living in a shared flat with his brother (a home of his own for the first time) made possible by funding through people’s voluntary care for ex-offenders.

The restorative justice scheme that Jade co-ordinates recently completed another SORI course, where 10 men spoke from their hearts at the presentation day before being given their certificates by the Mayor of Winchester, who is a great supporter of the scheme and of the Church Army funding that enables Jade to be in the chaplaincy to run it. Those visiting for the presentation were also enthusiastic about sharing what they had seen and heard with others ‘outside’ who are more negative about prisoners.

You are invited to pray in the coming weeks for

• the 9th SORI course due to take place in January and for the men who want to take part;
• the Governor and the decisions he has to take every day;
• the Transformed meetings for ex-offenders on the last Saturday in each month in Southampton;
• for all those in prison, inmates, warders and chaplaincy staff, this Christmas.

Using the website Global Village Fair (click on the link) or leaflet you can choose from a range of ethical gifts for any occasion. Whether in memory of somebody, as a birthday present or for a wedding gift, your purchase will be helping families around the world in tough circumstances by supporting the work of Mothers’ Union.

Gifts available include:

• the gift of training in bee-keeping and mushroom-growing – £7.50
• knowledge and training in our Family Life Programme which we run across much of Uganda – £38.00
• vocational training in setting up tailoring and sewing businesses, to women and girls in countries where there’s hardly any secondary school education – £100

Local Mothers’ Union group leaders should have received a supply of the brightly coloured leaflets in a recent mailing from the head office of Mothers’ Union (Mary Sumner House), but if you don’t want to use the website, or want further supplies of the leaflet contact them on 020 7222 5533.

Make A Mothers Day, our ethical gift catalogue specifically for Mothering Sunday, will be back just after Christmas with it’s own website and new leaflet for 2010.

Each month Jade allows us to publish excerpts from her prayer letter so that Mothers’ Union supporters across the region can remember the needs of the inmates and staff in their prayers as individuals or as groups. Please do join us in sharing this months items of prayer and praise. Jade writes:

I have spoken in several churches, schools and Mothers’ Union meetings across Hampshire in the last month, and been blessed by the number of people who are encouraged by listening to what God is doing at HMP Winchester. Here’s an example:

J was a very distressed young man when I was asked by a prison officer if I would begin to see him on a one-to-one basis. Through lots of prayers and listening to some of the very distressing things he had been through, I was able to lead him to faith in Jesus. Today J is living in the community, and with the help of those who faithfully support this ministry, we have been able to enrol him onto a hairdressing course and help him to start worshipping at a church near his new home.

The restorative justice course that Jade has been co-ordinating inside the prison starts again on 16th November. 26 men have applied, but only 10 can do the programme at any one time, so the other 16 will be put forward for the January programme.

There have been some very good evening fellowship events at the prison and in the last week three men came to faith and will hopefully join another three who want to be baptised. Please continue to pray for all the men at HMP Winchester and especially those who have recently found faith. We are constantly seeing men transferred out just before they come for baptism, but would love to see them baptised in Sunday Service at HMP Winchester as a witness to others that they have found faith here.

In addition to these items please pray for

• Jade as she goes on retreat 19th – 21st October
• the newly arrived Number 1 Governor
• those men who come regularly to chapel services
• the ‘Transformed’ meetings in Southampton on the last Saturday of each month.