Young Hawke's Bay students and prisoners team up for woodwork project

  • 10/08/2018

Young students and prisoners in the Hawke's Bay have won accolades through an unlikely partnership.

They've been working together to create and sell beautiful rimu bread boards.

St John's College year 12 students Ben Gardiner at Rhyva van Onselen came up with the idea for their entry in the Youth Enterprise Awards.

"We were trying to find a problem in the community that we could help solve," Mr Van Onselen told The Project.

"Through research we discovered that 80 percent of inmates, when they leave they reoffend and go back into jail. So we thought we'd try and tackle that problem."

The students started a project called Bruthas Ltd, which involves creating and selling the rimu bread boards. The boards connect up like a puzzle to form a waka shape.

Prisoners took care of the design and creation of the bread boards, while the students took care of research and marketing.

"The waka shape shows that we're all in the same boat, we're all in this together," Mr Gardiner said.

"Once we got in there and talked to the prisoners, once we collaborated with them there was a real sense of togetherness."

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