“Christmas means hope,” said Teresa Everts. “Going through some difficult times myself, I understand that you need hope to keep going on.”
Teresa is one of a group of our volunteers that prepared and delivered 75 gift bags to women at Alouette Correctional Centre for Women (ACCW) last Tuesday. The bags were sewn by the volunteers and filled with toiletries, holiday treats, colouring books, pencil crayons, crosswords, and more.
Along with the bags, the group left a Christmas card for each woman and a video of holiday greetings and songs.
“We make the bags every year,” said Linnea Groom, Volunteer Coordinator at M2/W2. “It’s so wonderful to make things special for people. I love being able to contribute to a little bit of joy.”
Our volunteers have delivered the gift bags and presented a Christmas event at ACCW since the prison opened in 2004. This year, however, as pandemic-related restrictions on visitors and volunteers programs continue, Linnea didn’t expect there’d be a program. She wasn’t even sure whether the gift bags would happen.
But in August, she was contacted by BC Corrections staff, who invited Linnea to prepare the usual Christmas program—but in video format. The institution also said the gift bags would be welcome.
The bags are made from cloth, and feature festive patterns and string-tied enclosures. The contents were pre-approved by BC Corrections and donated by Partners in Hope, a non-profit that has teamed up with us on this project from the beginning. “The women love the bags,” Linnea said. “They use them throughout the year to store toiletries and letters.”
“I think it’s significant that these bags are made by hand,” said Raymond Robyn, Executive Director of M2/W2. “The efforts our volunteers put into finding the fabric, cutting and sewing the bags, and preparing the contents is a reflection of their compassion for the women at ACCW.”
Many of the women who sewed and prepared the gift bags are also volunteer mentors with our in-prison mentorship program.
Prison can be a lonely place, especially at Christmas. This year many people are feeling isolated. The gift bags and Christmas video help maintain an important connection to the community.
One former inmate at ACCW described how it felt to open the bags: “We got the chance to be like everyone else. We got a present and we knew it was given by women who cared about us and our well-being. It was a time to think about something different than the doldrums of prison life. You’d hear ‘Look what I got!’ or ‘I can sure use this,’ or ‘Smell this shampoo! It’s awesome!’ When you looked around you’d see the sparkle in eyes that were once dimmed by time.”
We look forward to returning to ACCW in person soon—hopefully by next Christmas—so we can continue to lift spirits and build mentoring relationships with the women incarcerated there.
Versions of this story appear in Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows News and Abbotsford News.