Social & Employment
- Location:
France, Belgium, Luxembourg - Sponsor:
Pascale Audran-Abdelli - Grant:
5,000 to the Selection Committee on 28 March 2024 (Winner of the 2024 Student Solidarity Prize)
Project sponsor
The A Travers les Murs charity won the 16th Student Solidarity Prize for its speech and eloquence training courses for prisoners. The award was presented by Jean-François Nogrette, Director of Veolia's France and Special Waste Europe area.
Since August 2020, A Travers les Murs has been focusing on the development of oral communication in prisons as a way of helping prisoners to return to society. For these law students from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, the challenge is clear: to help participants regain their self-confidence by breaking the dynamics of recidivism and pacifying relations between prisoners and the prison administration within the establishments. The teaching method, devised in close collaboration with the prisons, is designed to be adaptable to the needs and desires of the inmates. The project has received strong support from the prison administration and, more generally, from the Ministry of Justice and many professionals in the prison system: sentence enforcement judges, liberty and custody judges, probation officers, lawyers, etc.
The courses are structured in the form of different modules, comprising 8 sessions of 1? to 2 hours each. A practical introduction to eloquence is given before opening up a number of avenues of reflection that participants can then explore further on their own. The trainers work in pairs.
With the Student Solidarity Prize, A Travers les Murs hopes to extend the geographical scope of its activities. Currently present in Nanterre, Fleury-Mérogis, Osny-Pontoise and Bois d'Arcy, it is opening branches in Saint-Denis de la Réunion, Bordeaux-Gradignan, Brussels, Luxembourg and, by the end of 2024, Lille, Meaux, Melun, Villepinte and Fresnes.