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8<br />
Tuesday <strong>January</strong> <strong>17</strong> 20<strong>17</strong><br />
Our People<br />
SELWYN TIMES<br />
Mary Kamo<br />
Prison chaplain role rewarded<br />
DEDICATED:<br />
Mary Kamo<br />
received a<br />
New Year<br />
Honour for<br />
services to<br />
the welfare<br />
of prisoners<br />
after being<br />
a prison<br />
chaplain for<br />
33 years.<br />
Mary Kamo spent 33 years working with prisoners to turn their lives around. Bridget<br />
Rutherford spoke to her about helping inmates, living at Birdlings Flat, and being<br />
proud of her kids<br />
You were made a Companion of the<br />
New Zealand Order of Merit in the<br />
New Year Honours. How did you<br />
feel when you found out?<br />
I was astonished; I thought they<br />
must have had the wrong person.<br />
But when I realised I felt very, very<br />
privileged. I found out about two<br />
months before the announcement.<br />
When you’re told, you have to keep it<br />
confidential and that was the hardest<br />
part, I couldn’t tell anybody!<br />
You received the honour for<br />
your work with the inmates<br />
at Christchurch Women’s,<br />
Paparua Men’s and<br />
Rolleston prisons as<br />
chaplain. Can you tell<br />
me what your work<br />
involved?<br />
It involved visiting<br />
the prison, meeting<br />
with inmates, doing<br />
sacraments,<br />
and Sunday<br />
services. Just<br />
really trying to<br />
assist inmates<br />
in getting<br />
some sense<br />
of their own<br />
WHANAU: Mary Kamo loves to spend time with her family.<br />
spirituality. A lot of people would say<br />
they believed in some sort of faith,<br />
but a lot don’t know how to bring it<br />
into daily living. More than 50 per<br />
cent of women in prison are Maori,<br />
and because of my involvement I was<br />
able to meet them at that level and<br />
also bring in people from their own<br />
iwi or kaumatua to come in a meet<br />
with them and do their whakapapa<br />
with them. I worked in Paparua and<br />
Rolleston prisons as well, but my<br />
heart was in the women’s prison because<br />
what we need to do, I believe,<br />
is find alternatives to imprisonment.<br />
Now I’m not talking about them not<br />
taking responsibility for criminal<br />
activity, but I do think there are<br />
probably better ways of handling it<br />
than breaking up families, children<br />
going into care, and then that whole<br />
damage being very difficult to repair<br />
when the mothers come out of<br />
prison. Pillars say that the families<br />
do the sentence, and that’s absolutely<br />
true.<br />
Distributorsdirect will provide families with the current<br />
(old) uniform while there is still a demand for it.<br />
Distributorsdirect will be at the Lincoln Event Centre<br />
Jan 26th and 30th from 11am until 6pm.<br />
Parents please contact us with your requirements<br />
to help us meet the demand.<br />
Email: productquery@gmail.com<br />
Phone: 03 338 5742 | Cell: 021 -559-383<br />
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