For over 30 years our branch has participated in the Prisoner Listener Scheme with two of our local prisons.
Listeners are serving prisoners who volunteer to support other prisoners who are experiencing particularly difficult times. They are trained by Samaritans and the Scheme is fully supported by the Prison Service as a way of keeping prisons safe, reducing self-harm, and preventing suicide.
One such listener at Rye Hill has very kindly donated a model boat to our branch made from over 7000 matchsticks and it took him over 3 months to build!
7000 matchsticks went into the model boat
The highly talented listener has been making models for over 50 years and told Martin, our Branch Prison Support Officer, that he would like to donate the boat to Samaritans in order to raise funds. He sees it as a way of saying thank you to our Prison Team as well as to Samaritans up and down the country who regularly take calls from prisoners.
We do intend to eventually sell this magnificent model through our shop but have decided to firstly display it in our shop window so that it can be admired by all of our volunteers and the local community.
