Members of the Gore Prison Fellowship group have been named as recipients of a volunteer recognition award for their work at Otago Corrections Facility, near Milton.
Every year, the Department of Corrections highlighted the importance of volunteers' work in prisons by giving an award to an individual and another to a group in each prison, Otago Corrections Facility chaplain Peter Collett said.
Because 85 per cent of volunteers who came into prisons were classed as ‘‘religious volunteers'' the chaplains were asked to nominate recipients for the awards, he said.
Gore Prison Fellowship members lead church services in high-security units. The services did not take the form of what many thought of as traditional church services.
Those taking the services had to be prepared to be flexible in order to accommodate the needs of the inmates, he said.
Many inmates had never attended church and were not familiar with traditional services, he said.
Not only did the prison fellowship volunteers give up time to conduct the services, they spent more than two hours travelling to and from the facility one Sunday a month, he said.
‘‘They faithfully do it [take the services],'' Mr Collett said.
Gore Prison Fellowship members would be presented with a gift, made by an inmate, at a ceremony on Sunday, he said.
