Steps to Recovery Programs
(Inside and Outside)
About.
Given the social ill of mass incarceration in the Philippines, largely due to the drug crisis rising predominately out of impoverished communities, the Social Entrepreneurship, Technology, and Business Institute (SETBI) aims to redeem the inmates’ time and their lives for societal good. The College Education Behind Bars (CEBB) program provides the detainees the means to advance their education in prison and offers them a recovery program while obtaining their college diplomas. This dual program serves as a model of education to deter criminal behavior and to rehabilitate women and men who have been in prison or jail to transform their lives so they become engaged members of their civic communities.
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The purpose of Step to Recovery is to find a healing power in attendees’ lives to rehabilitate, reform, restore, and reconcile them. To help them overcome life issues, the twelve-step recovery course is a prerequisite for all inmates who are willing to enroll and study in CEBB.
Offering a steps program inside the prison helps inmates meet personal and social challenges. Many Persons Deprived of Liberty (PDL) have personality and consequentially society related problems; however, all these problems can be overcome with the divine help because God has not left his image-bearers alone but provides resources for them to conquer all habits and hang-ups. The therapeutic model emphasizes community as members share their struggles confidentially and without judgment and walk together through their battles by affirming each other’s worth.
By working through these steps and applying their values-based principles, students begin to grow spiritually. They become free from the pain of their pasts and the destructive behaviors of their present. This freedom creates peace, serenity, joy, and more importantly, a stronger personal relationship with God, our One and Only Higher Power, and subsequently with others; it is by truth we have been set for free.
To service the needs of many inmates, SETBI partners with the Ateneo de Davao University, local faith-based organizations, local churches, and step recovery leaders inside the prison who have selected the track to spend their time helping their peers and subsequently were trained by US practitioners in the field.
In the case of CEBB in Davao City Jail, for those PDL who attended the degree and the recovery program inside and outside, the recidivism rate is almost zero because CEBB seeks to develop the incarcerated individual as a whole person.