“We have seamstresses sitting with nothing to do,” a Florida Department of Corrections official told Raeanne Hance, the regional executive director for Prison Fellowship® in the Southeast.
To save money as 2012 wound to a close, the FDOC had prepared to close seven prisons and four work camps. Inmates at the affected facilities were sitting idly after their regular programming ground to a halt for weeks before the planned consolidation.
But Raeanne had an inspired idea: There were inmate woodworkers and seamstresses who needed something to do, and there were also many Angel Tree® children in Florida who needed a sign of their incarcerated parents’ love at Christmas. Could the inmates create gifts to be distributed to children by Prison Fellowship’s Angel Tree partners?
Officials and inmates latched onto the opportunity to give something back to the community. Working feverishly for several weeks, certified seamstresses and talented woodworkers created clothing, purses, stuffed animals, and toy airplanes, cars, and guitars. At one prison, the wooden toys were made from a truckload of scrap wood salvaged from a prison enterprise that makes furniture for the Florida government.
Once all the gifts were made, they still needed to be distributed. Raeanne identified local Angel Tree church partners who needed more gifts to hand out at their Angel Tree Christmas parties. They were also distributed at a Florida children’s home where about half the children have a parent behind bars. All in all, Raeanne estimates that the inmate workers made enough clothing and toys to help Prison Fellowship serve close to 300 children in Florida.
“[The inmates] were so excited,” says Raeanne, explaining how inmates welcomed the opportunity to bless children like their own through the toy-making program. “They want to do it again next year.”
Too often, inmates are written off as a “problem,” misfits who must be thrown on the social scrapheap. But that’s not how God sees them. Just as the inmates made beautiful, high-quality toys from a truckload of scrap wood, God is preparing to turn inmates’ lives into something lovely and useful for His Kingdom.