Three inmates are “giving something back” by helping out at Inspire Foundation. Photo: Darrin Zammit Lupi

A worker holds a wooden plank steady while his mate drills it in place around the goats’ pen at Inspire Foundation where they are constructing a colourful fence.

Another of their colleagues looks around and starts pointing out, eagerly, at all the work that needs to be done at the foundation’s animal park in Marsascala.

“We are so glad we were given the opportunity to help out, to show what we can do and to be part of something,” says Michael Zahra, one of the men.

They are all prison inmates.

After the park was vandalised last week, the director of the Corradino Correctional Facility contacted the foundation – which works with people with disabilities – and told them that three inmates were available to help out.

Inspire business manager Giovanna Mirabile immediately seized the opportunity.

“We always need help. Besides, we are about promoting a message of integration and this does not only apply to people with disabilities. In this case, we are giving these inmates a chance,” she said.

So the three men started doing community work at the foundation yesterday and they will continue until their help is needed.

Mr Zahra, 43, has four out of a nine-year jail term left to serve. During the time he spent in prison he decided to join a scheme for inmates who wished to carry out community work. So, for the past two years, he has been working in the prison bakery to gain work experience and to show his commitment.

It’s nice to speak to people, integrate and give back a little to a society that deserves it

“I do this because it’s nice to be out of those walls. It’s nice to speak to people, integrate and give back a little to society, which deserves it. It’s satisfying to see that I am giving something and gaining people’s trust,” he said.

His friend Philip Azzopardi, 70, fully agreed. He has the last six months of a six-year jail term left to serve: “Work keeps me alive. At least I’m doing something.”

Ludvic Bugeja, 38, who has two years left to serve after doing four, went on to add: “You are giving something back and working as opposed to just staying in our cells. I appreciate that these people welcomed us. When the prison director told me he was sending me here, I think I cried.”