Tom Bevard’s looking for a few good people.
Actually, several hundred of the 5,000 needed statewide to mentor Kansas inmates scheduled to be freed in the next year to 18 months.
Bevard, whose Freedom Ministries has been taking evangelistic programs to Kansas prisons since 1995, was asked by Gov. Sam Brownback to head up efforts for a faith-based pre-release program for 17 counties in southeast Kansas. Volunteers will spend an hour or two a week visiting with prisoners by way of Skype, an Internet program, or telephone.
“Basically, the governor wants each volunteer to become a prisoner’s friend,” Bevard said, to help them develop job and social skills.
The goal is to reduce recidivism.
“Prisoners will be encouraged to do such things as dress neatly and be well-groomed when applying for a job, and once employed to be punctual and do what the job demands,” Bevard said. “Volunteers also will have a role in preparing an inmate’s family for homecomings.”
Bevard and others helping to get the mentoring program off the ground were tutored in a conference held in Wichita June 20-22.
“State funding for several pre-release programs have been cut,” the result of budget-tightening in Topeka, Bevard said, which led the Department of Corrections, with the governor’s blessings, to embrace faith-based mentoring by volunteers.
Bevard may be contacted at 365-3233. His office is at 101 N. Washington Ave.
THE MENTORING program is just one of several things that have filled Freedom Ministries’ plate.
An educational program at the women’s prison in Topeka is off the ground and 12 inmates are being instructed in the basics, reading, math and English, five mornings a week for three hours. A two-hour session in the afternoon is dedicated to Bible study.
“This is for women who are in the last year to year and a half in prison,” Bevard said. “The result will be a GED (general education development) diploma and a Kansas work-ready certificate.”
It is similar to the mentoring program, only more intense.
Two Lawrence women are involved daily. Dorothy Fernandez, wife of a junior high school principal, is the volunteer coordinator and does some teaching. Cindy Manske, a certified teacher, does much of the instruction and draws a modest salary.
“We raised about $5,000 at a fundraiser in Lawrence to pay for the first year,” Bevard noted.
Educational opportunities are desperately needed among the women, he added: “Many of them never graduated from high school.”
Classes are in a recreation room. Bevard dreams of the day when a spiritual life center will be the setting, “much like the one they have in Ellsworth.”
The Ellsworth center was constructed by volunteer labor, with materials paid for by $600,000 raised privately.
“We’re on the verge of receiving permission from the Department of Corrections — I’ve been told it’s coming — to start fundraising for a Topeka center,” Bevard said.
“This is an exciting time,” on an evangelism front, he said.
FREEDOM MINISTRIES was founded by Bevard, 56, when he was permitted to take the story of the Bible into the women’s prison in Topeka.
He thought if he and volunteers held a cookout, inmates would flock to the event. Add a little music and they’d also stay around to hear God’s word. The formula worked.
More prisons were added in the years ahead. Today, Freedom Ministries is the only religious organization that is permitted to visit all eight Kansas prisons.
“We were in three — Lansing, Winfield and Topeka — in May and will be in the others — El Dorado, Hutchinson, Norton, Ellsworth and Larned — in September,” he said.
The tried-and-true approach hasn’t change an iota: Inmates are fed and Bevard and volunteers — more every year — then entertain and conclude with a sermon.
“We had 175 women answer the altar call in Topeka this year,” he said.
A few years ago Bevard added school visits to the organization’s itinerary.
The agenda is different from that at prisons. The focus is on drug education and the advantages of staying in school and getting an education.
Freedom Ministries efforts are supported by donations and sponsoring churches, including several in Iola.
