Sponsorship green lights prison education pilot

Otago’s leading Inside-Out programme, which brings university-level training into prisons, has received welcome support from New Zealand’s Due Drop Foundation.

The Foundation, a charitable trust, which focusses on wrap-around community programmes which have a direct impact on disadvantaged New Zealanders, has generously donated $25,000 to fund a three-year pilot of the Inside-Out workshops at the Otago Corrections Facility (OCF).

The Inside-Out programme, launched in 1997 in the United States, brings together campus-based students with incarcerated students, with the philosophy that society is strengthened when higher education and learning is made widely accessible and when it allows participants to encounter each other as equals.

Due Drop Trustee Richard Jeffery says for the past five years, Due Drop Foundation has been supporting Pillars Charitable Trust, an organisation dedicated to helping children of incarcerated parents.

“By backing this initiative, we strengthen our commitment within this sector and support a proven programme that aligns closely with our principles of Intelligent Giving,” Richard says.

Otago Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Gender Studies, Dr Fairleigh Gilmour, will lead the project. Fairleigh is one of only two Inside-Out trained educators in Aotearoa New Zealand.

The sponsorship from Due Drop will mean the trial can be run as a for-credit Humanities internship during summer school, allowing six incarcerated students and six campus students to complete an 18-point paper over six weeks, for three years.

In 2024, Fairleigh trialled Inside-Out at OCF, running workshops in sociology, criminology and politics. Students and staff were positive about the trial outcomes, with some of the incarcerated students enrolling in further papers and campus students describing it as an inspiring and rewarding experience.

“We are incredibly grateful for the generous donation by the Due Drop Foundation to support the Inside-Out Pilot at the University of Otago,” Fairleigh says.

“It is a wonderful opportunity for both the campus and incarcerated students. This Pilot will allow us to explore the positive benefits of this inclusive approach to teaching and learning, as documented in Inside-Out initiatives across the world, and will also allow us to explore best practice in terms of adapting the Inside-Out approach for the Aotearoa New Zealand context.”

Otago Corrections Facility General Manager James Miles says the prison is very excited about the opportunities this partnership will offer prison learners.

“Research shows education has a strong, positive impact on people’s wellbeing and their employment prospects on release,” he says. “This produces economic and social benefits for the individual and their family, as well as flow on benefits for future generations and society as a whole; through a more productive workforce, and safer, more equitable communities.

“Tertiary education is something most of our prison learners have considered as ‘not for them’,” James says. “Through the programmes delivered by Fairleigh and the University of Otago team, the men are gaining new skills and qualifications as well as developing their critical and analytical thinking, confidence, and a new belief in themselves - their capabilities and their future prospects.”

You can read more about Fairleigh’s work here Academic unlocking potential in prisons | University of Otago

-Kōrero by Margie Clark, communications adviser