The project responds to the young prisoners’ lack of information about social rights. Very often, after they exit prisons, young people face recidivism and unemployment. The project “Preparation courses for the life after prison” includes trainings for young prisoners who will be released in the following three months and the publishing of booklets on the rights of prisoners. The topic of the trainings will be social rights, especially right to education, right to employment and right to legal and social protection.
 

Turkay’s project “Preparatory courses for the life after Prison” was for young prisoners who were at the end of their imprisonment. As the youth worker of the organizations Turkay was the coordinator of the projects organizing trainings at the prisons. The project started in September, 2013 and in mid of October the trainings started in prisons. In general there were 10 two-days training in 10 prisons and more than 300 prisoners who are at the end of their imprisonment and to be released within three months were involved in these trainings. The second training was in women prison which is the only women prison in our country that has 300 women prisons living there. The main topics of the trainings were social rights, as well as effective job search mechanisms, how to approach relevant state bodies after release, preparing CV etc. We have also published booklets that cover this useful information. These booklets were also distributed in the prisons.

Conducting trainings and publishing the booklets were the awareness raising part of the project. After finishing the training a round table was held with the participation of stakeholders in order to inform the public about the activities of this project, as well as to analyse the national legislation with human rights organisations and to make proposals. As a conclusion of this round table a recommendation was made to the responsible state bodies that include creating social worker and priest positions in the prisons.

During the trainings, especially at the training in women prison young prisoners were active and were interested in the topics of the discussions. It was very rare cases for them to have this kind of trainings, meetings. As there was more interest to the trainings among them there were some prisoners who were above 30 and were at the end of their imprisonment. There were also some prisoners with disabilities. We didn't refuse them participate as for us informing them was also important.

This was a very valuable experience for Turkay’s organisation as they are coordinating connection between ex-prisoners and state bodies which helped the organisation to have more experience in this field and as well as to have more close cooperation with state entities. As an organization they had an opportunity to share our experience with members of national NGOs, human rights organization which in turn contributed to the visibility of the organisation.

Project visit

In the beginning of March 2014 Turkay had a project visit by her mentor in the training course, Natalia Gudakovska. This was a very useful and productive 2 days visit in terms of meeting with representative of Ministry of Youth and Sport, Azerbaijan Youth Foundation, having discussion with local NGO representatives, informing them about our activities, ENTER LTTC, EYF and other European opportunities for young people. During the project visit of the mentor meetings were held with the head of Azerbaijan Youth Foundation, head of department at the Ministry of Youth and Sports and several NGOs, as well as a group of young people from different countries. At the meeting with a group of international young people who were the participants of Youth in Action Project in Azerbaijan, representatives of participating NGOs and also these young people shared information about their organizations’ activities and had their contacts for future cooperation and partnership.