25 June 2010
This winter the Corrections Inmate Employment (CIE) Nursery at Wanganui Prison will be supporting an environmental education initiative operating in local schools, known as the “Paper4trees” programme.
The Paper4trees programme was first established in Tauranga in 2001 but has grown significantly in recent years and is now a nationwide scheme involving 1400 schools around New Zealand.
The programme encourages schools to introduce a paper and cardboard recycling scheme and rewards participating schools with native trees for their efforts. For every woolsack of recycled paper products the school receives a native plant.
CIE Wanganui Nursery has worked with the Environmental Education for Resource Sustainability Trust (EERST) in order to supply local schools with native trees, shrubs, grasses and flaxes.
Because the programme has grown so rapidly, EERST approached a much larger group of plant suppliers in 2009, as it was in need of more nurseries to help supply trees for the programme. This year twenty-six schools in the Wanganui area have been supplied with native trees, shrubs, grasses and flaxes grown at the CIE Nursery.
CIE Prison Nursery at Wanganui has contributed to helping children understand the importance of protecting the environment through carbon neutral waste management by supplying two hundred and twenty trees as reward for more than twenty one tonnes of paper and cardboard recycled by local schools.
“The CIE Nursery which specialises in growing native flora and has upwards of 300,000 plants in the nursery at any one time, decided to become involved as soon as it heard about the Paper4trees programme,” says CIE Northern Horticulture Manager Michael Queree.
The CIE Nursery models its operational functions on a commercial wholesale nursery, whilst also maintaining the custodial responsibilities that the prison requires.
The nursery has four main areas that prisoners gain a variety of skills in, including a plant propagation department, a potting and production department, a plant maintenance team, and a dispatching department. Prisoners also have the opportunity to complete an NZQA qualification in horticulture within the work based setting.
“The CIE Nursery contribution has been incredibly successful,” says Michael Queree. “The prisoners have contributed not just to the children’s programme and to helping maintain a healthy environment, but also to the sustainability of native flora. All the trees and plants supplied were native species, and we’ve been able to supply one school alone with one hundred and twenty trees.”
CIE is responsible for providing relevant employment and training opportunities throughout New Zealand’s twenty prisons through specialised CIE programmes, such as the Wanganui Prison Nursery which employs twenty prisoners in the nursery, whilst also training twenty-four more.
“CIE assesses market trends to identify industries that require qualified workers within the geographical areas that prisoners are likely to be released, and it’s great that the horticultural skills that the prisoners have learnt have been utilised by local schools in this way.”
“CIE aims to give prisoners the skills to obtain employment on release, with the aim of reducing their risk of re-offending and through this improving public safety. The Paper4Tress initiative also gives them the opportunity to give back to the community and experience the value of playing a proactive role in it. Helping offenders become productive members of our communities can only make them safer for all of us,” says Michael.
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