What to Expect as a Prison Ministry Volunteer

By Paula Schievan-Pietersma

Before I started prison mentorship, I had a picture in my mind of what it would be like.

A buzzer would sound as the barbed wire gate opened to let me through. Guards would escort me through multiple locked doors, search me, and then lead me to a cold, concrete room. Across a steel table, a scowling prisoner in an orange jumpsuit would await me. The cell’s heavy door would slam shut behind me, and the guard would wait outside in case I needed them. Then, I’d sit down in a hard chair and try my hardest not to say something wrong.

That image lingered in my mind as the date for my first visit approached. I worried that the person I met would hurt or threaten me, or that I would feel trapped or unsafe. I wondered what I had gotten myself into.

My concerns were real, and I wasn’t the first prison ministry volunteer to feel them. But most of what I had pictured turned out not to be true. Prison mentorship is safer, more ordinary, and more meaningful than you may expect. And if you’re considering volunteering, you may be more ready than you realise.

How I Became a Prison Mentor

My name is Paula Schievan-Pietersma. I applied to become a mentor with M2W2 in 2019. I was approved right around the time the pandemic began, which meant I had to wait before I could actually start mentoring. But as soon as the prison opened again, I was at the gates of Fraser Valley Institution, mask on, ready to begin.

My interest in this work had started years earlier. I had heard about M2W2 through my church, and something about it stayed with me. At the time, my children were still young, my husband travelled often for work, and we didn’t have family nearby to help. I couldn’t commit to it yet, but I kept thinking about it. When my kids were older, and the timing finally made sense, I knew it was time.

Even after years of mental preparation, I was still nervous. I needed reassurance from other women who had already been mentoring inside the prison. They didn’t dismiss my fears, but the picture they painted was much less intense than what I’d imagined. 

That helped me take the next step, and what I found next surprised me.

What It Was Really Like to Meet Someone in Prison

When I finally walked in, the other volunteers’ words proved surprisingly true. Yes, there were gates, doors, and a process to get inside. But the room was a gymnasium, not a cell block, and the women there wore regular clothes instead of jumpsuits. I was surprised to find myself having a hard time telling who was a mentor and who was an inmate.

Prison mentorship quickly became much less about entering a frightening place and much more about entering a human one. When you sit across from someone and talk, listen, play a game, or hear about their day, the setting fades into the background, and your visit becomes all about the person in front of you.

What Mentorship Really Means

People sometimes assume that preaching is a big part of mentorship because M2W2 has Christian roots. But it isn’t. The people we meet know we are from a Christian organisation. If they want to pray or talk about faith, then we do. Otherwise, we aren’t there to force anything on them or try to convert them.

We’re there to be with them.

That may sound simple, but it matters more than people realise. Many incarcerated people have been abandoned, disappointed, and let down again and again. Their trust is broken. When a mentor shows up every two weeks, consistently, without demanding anything in return, that communicates something powerful.

Sometimes mentorship looks like a deep conversation. Sometimes it looks like playing a game, even if you don’t particularly want to. Sometimes it means listening to someone rant about whatever frustration has been building up that week. Sometimes your mentee may arrive late, leave early, or not show up at all. But you keep coming back. And when you see your mentee again, you say you missed them and ask how they’ve been.

That simple act of showing up consistently is the heart of this work.

With my own mentee, trust took time. At first, she often didn’t show up. Or, she arrived late and left early. At one point, someone suggested that I should switch to a different mentee. But I kept trying, and eventually she began to trust that I wouldn’t leave. Where she had expected disappointment, she found consistency instead. Because I showed up, she started to show up, too. Now, she’s sometimes waiting for me when I arrive.

Why Mentorship Matters So Much

The mentee isn’t the only one who changes through their relationship with a mentor. Over time, I stopped thinking of prison ministry as “visiting prisoners.” I am visiting my mentees, people I care about, perhaps even my friends.

It took time, but now I see the person, not the label. That matters inside prison, and it matters even more after release. I spoke to a woman who had moved into a halfway house. She told me it was hard to return to her community because people could tell she had been in prison. Feeling like everyone could see her past written on her made her life lonely and painful.

My response: “How can they tell?” It wasn’t at all obvious to me after I’d begun seeing her as a person rather than a former prisoner.

That’s the kind of relationship that mentors offer, and it means everything to people who feel like they’re still wearing orange jumpsuits even after they’ve gone home. Mentors see them as people with stories, hopes, frustrations, humour, goals, and gifts. For someone trying to rebuild their life, having even one person who sees them that way can make a real difference.

You May Be More Ready Than You Think

Mentoring someone in prison is probably not what you imagine. It isn’t sitting at a steel table in a concrete cell with a guard at the door. It is sitting across from a person in a casual setting. It is listening, playing cards, talking about recipes, family, or goals. It is being steady when trust takes time, and showing up when someone has learned not to expect people to be there for them.

If you feel drawn to this ministry, I encourage you to try volunteering as a mentor. You may be nervous at first, but you may also be surprised by how ordinary, meaningful, and deeply human it is to sit across from someone in prison and simply be present.

You might discover that you were more ready than you realised.