9 December
This Christmas, Corrections Inmate Employment (CIE) and Northland Region Corrections Facility (NRCF) will be providing a truckload of fresh, organic vegetables including potatoes, cabbages, and spinach from its gardens to the Kaikohe community.
Every year, on Christmas day, the Kaikohe community provides a meal for the homeless and those without families in the local town hall.
This year's Christmas meal donation will come directly from CIE gardens at NRCF, which provides prisoners with training in horticulture including studying towards NZQA.
The vegetables grown in the CIE garden are totally organic, and are grown from organic seeds.
Maria Fuller, the Chief Volunteer Organiser of the Kaikohe community Christmas function, is grateful for the offer of fresh produce from the CIE managed garden. She is expecting to feed anywhere between 270-400 people.
This December the Northland CIE training course for Horticulture Trade and Technical Training has also celebrated the graduation of six students who have all contributed to the NRCF gardens.
The success of this year’s course will be a great Christmas boost to the prisoners who have gained new found horticultural skills, which will help them obtain employment on release.
“It is a real buzz to see the prisoners interested in the dynamics of vegetable gardening and putting the theory into practice in the prison,” says CIE Northland Region Area Manager Don Robertson.
“Encouraging prisoners to understand how easy it is to grow vegetables encourages them to grow vegetables for their families on their release and in turn provides a healthy diet, which assists in the prevention of things like diabetes and heart disease.”
Next year CIE and the NRCF will run 10 Horticulture courses that could see 150 prisoners gain NZQA qualifications.
Prison Manager Chris Gisler says that the horticulture project and Christmas donation has many positive outcomes: “The prison likes to feel part of the community and by providing the opportunity for gardens to be developed inside the wall achieves two goals - engaging prisoners in worthwhile pastimes which could lead to employment on release and assisting valuable community projects, such as the Kaikohe Christmas dinner.”
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