After studying politics at Victoria University, the Palmerston North native spent 10 months in East Timor with Volunteer Service Abroad.
She helped fundraise and gain awareness for a library to promote education and learning. She also helped train customer service support staff.
After realising she wanted to develop her skills further, she moved to Dunedin to do a master's degree in accounting at the University of Otago.
She is now 26 and has continued volunteering, this time with Rape Crisis Dunedin.
"I basically was interested in this position because I thought it was a really awesome opportunity to help people who have been through really, really terrible trauma."
As a volunteer at Rape Crisis, she worked up to five shifts a month, answering hotline calls, and providing face-to-face support sessions.
She also accompanied victims to various appointments they did not want to attend alone.
Working at the centre inspired her. She was continuously struck by how resilient victims and survivors were, and to watch them "keep on keeping on" throughout a traumatising time in their lives, she said.
The focus of volunteers in other countries was on establishing organisations to service or educate the community, while in New Zealand, the focus was more on volunteers developing existing organisations.
"It is very different. It's kind of more working within the institutions that we already have."
The crisis centre provided necessary training in topics such as the Treaty of Waitangi, decolonisation, and understanding genders within the community.
"The skill of supporting someone is all new to me, and I'm still learning more."
The Dunedin centre has six paid staff, two paid counsellors and five or six volunteers.
Rape Crisis Dunedin, previously called Dunedin Collective of Women, changed its name in 1981 to focus on supporting women who had been through sexual assault and abuse and support them through the healing process.
The original group had no manifesto, but worked by two main rules - always support other women and their right to absolute confidentiality - something that had not changed to this day, Ms Hutchinson said.
The organisation would be rebranding and changing its name in the coming months, but the core values would stay the same, she said.
"There will always be changes [at the centre] that will reflect the needs of the society, and what it needs from us."
- FISI-BELLE CARRASCO-REX
