New Opportunity

Strengthening Families is a program that began in the secular space and found its way into the Christian space. Now, Operation Foundation is working to implement a contextualised version in Fiji.

Bethany Carlsson, while serving with SIL Vanuatu, began taking existing Strengthening Families material and rewriting it with Christian content and values. The material is now used around the world and we started a conversation with Bethany several months ago.

We have begun to pilot the material in the Nanuku Community and are in planning to pilot different parts of the material with inmates before taking it out to inmate families.

Lisa Lovodua, our Community Development Team leader, has been working with a small team to contextualise and adapt the material. In a recent team meeting Lisa provided this update on the pilot in Nanuku, ‘The feedback has been very positive, and the parents are looking forward to starting family time with their children from next week.’

‘Strengthening Families’ is eighteen sessions and is designed to be run in small groups. We are excited at how this new focus will impact the families of the communities we serve.

Operation Foundation is committed to working holistically to see restored lives and communities. Thank you for supporting our opportunity to have impact!

Opportunity to Encounter

Operation Foundation’s programs are designed to lead participants in a journey of self-awareness and self-confrontation. These objectives are crafted and delivered from the initial design to the curriculum writing and, finally, the facilitator training.

This past Friday, JB gave his update on what was happening in Nasinu Correctional Centre.

“What a change of attitude in the young men this week! They paid attention and participated comfortably in class, asking questions. The highlight was when one of the most disruptive young men approached me yesterday, after all the others had left, and began to share that he would love to be restored.”

It is in these moments that we observe the journey objectives having impact. The disruption is often the first giveaway of a participant being uncomfortable with conviction. This most often leads to a conversation around what I’m hiding, which in this case was ‘I want to be restored!” That flame of hope is the precious gift that he has allowed himself to become vulnerable to verbalise. What we now do with that matters, as the truth is that any flame can be extinguished as quickly as it can become a fire. These are the opportunities to encounter!

The encounter is built on vulnerability and genuine expression of change. This is what I want… becomes the language that begins to shape heart and mind towards something better. What is visible in our programs is the person of Jesus Christ. We don’t push or insist but make him available - which is what he truly is - to all of us.

Each week, as Operation Foundation runs programs in different Correctional Centres, this is the encounter we long to see - the encounter that leads to new lament, hope, ideas, and opportunity.

Operation Foundation is committed to restoring lives and communities to God's glory. Thank you for supporting our opportunity to have impact!

Fiji Prisons Update Feb 2025

‘How can I trust God for restoration? All my family are angry with me and may not want to restore.’ As the OF team encounter these real questions, they are trained to slow their response to first encounter and observe the living humanity of the person with the question.

Too long for restoration means that one is painfully aware of a breach or brokenness. It speaks of longing for something Divine to amend and overcome the limits of the human condition. In straightforward terms, it speaks to hunger…a hunger for an experience of what is right.

The impact of rehabilitation programs in prisons cannot be fabricated; the tide of sinful dysfunction and appetites is too pervasive. If transformation is to be real, it needs to be anchored in truth, and Proverbs 4:19 is one trumpet cry to reality - ‘but the way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know what makes them stumble.’ Impact is struck into a flame of new truth when the prisoner encounters the limits and failure within themselves and the hope found in the abundant love and mercy of Jesus Christ.

‘I had a lot of doubts about this program, but now, after having gone through it, I have learned so much. I learned a lot of truth - about God and about myself. I finally believe I know God and am willing to obey him!’ Statements like this become evidence of a new living work forged in the Life that became the light of all mankind, shining in the darkness and overcoming the darkness.

Each Friday, the OF team writes and shares their week of interactions, encouragements, and impacts. Last Thursday, in an intense and vulnerable session on forgiveness, thirty men became so impacted that they decided and declared, without prompting, to become followers of the one who forgives - Jesus.

Operation Foundation is committed to restoring lives and communities to God's glory. Thank you for supporting the activity of impact!

Nanuku Update Feb 2025

Growing, strengthening, and developing are all words that can be applied to our engagement in Nanuku. However, the best phrase is collaborative impact!

From the initial meeting in Nanuku, where we sat cross-legged on the floor, symbolically holding out our empty hands and asking God to fill our hands and hearts…to establishing a community vision and momentum of which we are just a part.

The last two Christmas seasons have been crime-free; that alone is so noteworthy we could end the update there. However, the ministry/early childhood centre continues progressing towards completion as willing hands, hearts, and funds are available, and our core activities continue to build impact.

The school lunch program provides more than a meal for the twenty-three registered children. As we celebrated the end of the school year, we also celebrated their increased school attendance and its flow-on impact on their class reports and grades. Twenty-two are registered again for 2025, with another ten on a waiting list. The collaborative effort is producing impact in young lives and altering pathways.

Another area of impact is the work with senior high school students. Seven senior students completed Form 7 with marks that have allowed them to pursue tertiary education. Over the summer break, Lisa Lovodua, our OF Community Development Team Leader, worked with twelve young people in Nanuku to prepare them for employment. The strategy outcomes were to;

  1. Motivate them to make a change for themselves through constant communication and engagement.

  2. Provide the assistance they needed in obtaining the paperwork, official documents and primary indentification’s, to make it easier for them to gain employment.

  3. Give them some background on how the interview processes might go by doing mock interviews and prepping for potential interview questions, and dress codes for interviews.

The result is eight of the twelve have found employment, two are preparing for interviews, and another six youth have asked to participate.

Lisa writes that, ‘…because of this initiative, we have seen a huge increase in the confidence of the youth involved, with an improvement in the key relationships between OF and our single parent group and our youth. This employment preparation process has become a big encouragement to our youth leadership in the direction they want to take the rest of the youth of Nanuku this year.’

Operation Foundation is committed to the vision of restoring lives and restoring communities to the glory of God. Thank you for your collaborative support in bringing impact!

Multiplying Impact

The most common response to the question ‘How have you been' is that we are busy. It can often be a throwaway line, but in this case, the last six months specifically, we have been swamped!

As the prison system emerged out of Covid-19 and Operation Foundation was invited back; we suddenly found ourselves swamped with opportunity and need. Our team and resources were stretched as we responded to what was placed in our hands.

Being busy is one thing, but could we be effective and have an impact amid these increased activity levels?

The Operation Foundation team are dedicated to the theme of ‘Making Him Known’, with the understanding that our character will speak louder than our words. We were now being asked to step up to levels of activity that a primary focus and attention to character could only support.

The team went from facilitating eighteen programs in the 3rd quarter of 2022 to fifty programs to 724 inmates in the 4th quarter of 2022, followed by fifty-one programs to 734 inmates in the 1st quarter of 2023. We have been busy!

Tracking the impact was equally important, and our team debriefs suddenly became holy ground. We evidenced the incredible strength of team witness, stories of inmates coming to tears of repentance and unfolding celebrations of hope, all beautifully woven through the activity.

Here is one message from the team.

A lot of hurt, pain and anger, and not forgetting SHAME, opened up during Trauma Healing. It has helped the brothers understand what trauma is and what responsible steps to take in the restoration process. Towards the end of our class today, there were a lot of questions and breakthroughs….

…and here is another one.

The classroom was packed, but still, they kept informing me that a friend wanted to join our class and asking if I could include his name as well; by the time True Identity started, there were around 23 men sitting in class. The True Identity sessions began to shake them a bit, and they also did some internal digging into who they truly were. Some of the brothers broke down and shared their life and plans before being sentenced. True Identity challenges them, and I could see them responding to the One knocking at the door of their hearts.

We have always counted it a sacred privilege to journey with the men and women in prison. To respond to the leap in activity, we have doubled down on our team training and development so that we can be confident that we are both having an impact and ‘Making Him Known’.

Below are the last two quarterly engagement snapshots and pictures of some of the team and guests at our recent OF Leadership Roundtable.

OF Team Retreat

While we have put effort to conducting our team meetings via zoom there is nothing like everyone in the same space. Team building takes a different dimension when we get to share the same space space rather than the same bandwidth.

The OF core leaders came together at the OF Ministry Centre at Navua on Sunday afternoon the 12th of March. Its been a while since we have been together like this and so while the next 3 days were full, Sunday evening was dedicated to a meal around the long table and catching up.

Each day had a rhythm of beginning in a time of early and extended prayer and closing with the same. Gabi Buli, our northern team leader creatively led this for us.

Our founder, Peter Schultz, led with the first devotion looking deeply into the story of Cain and Abel from Genesis 4 and its application for us as the Operation Foundation team.

Hector Hatch (Deputy Principal - International School Suva ) then led us through a beautiful exposition of God’s heart for the vulnerable and children. One of our core requirements is to keep in compliance with our child protection and vulnerable persons policies and so following Hector we had Jill Schultz take us through the structured learning requirements to uphold our compliance.

Monday afternoon sessions kicked of with Major General (Retd) Ioane Naivalurua, the previous Corrections Commissioner (2006-2010) facilitating an open dialogue with the team. Mr Naivalurua had introduced Yellow Ribbon and so the team got to hear first hand the heart and motivation behind what is now Fiji’s leading movement of giving inmates a second chance. This was an inspiring session.

Jill Schultz then finished our day out with a practical counselling skills application on ‘reflective listening’. Amongst a lot of laughter as we tried this new skill out on each other there was a lot of learning.

Tuesday we were blessed to have Pastor Pio Tukana Nakesu (Namadi Heights Baptist Church & Associate Director for Langham South Pacific) stir our hearts with a tremendous our devotion before Semi Lutu, our western team leader, led us through a great exercise on what’s so important about OF’s six core values.

Dr Richard Beyer came spoke to the team about his 35 years of experience in agricultural and food technology community development across the Pacific. Richard has had long term success in developing small scale profitable and yet simple projects and this grabbed the team’s attention.

Peter Schultz then led an participatory session where we began filling the while board with OF’s past, present, and future. This became the reference point for everything that followed.

Tuesday afternoon the team from Hopes of Hope came and presented a session on self-awareness, vulnerability and empathy. Homes of Hope works exclusively with victims while we work with offenders and the sharing and following discussions between their experiences and ours was valuable learning.

Wednesday began with Pastor Mike McMillen sharing a devotion from Romans 12 before we headed into our long morning of strategic planning. Our plans, obstacles, capacity building, program development and case loads all became a place of discussion, prayer and planning.

By Wednesday afternoon our hearts, heads and appetites were full. There is nothing like being all together!