Mary-Jane Rivers

Mary Jane Rivers (known as Mary-Jane, She earned a Bachelor of Arts with Honours at Victoria University of Wellington in 1986.

Career

In the early 1970s, while working at the Upper Hutt City Council, Rivers encountered a woman and her children in need of a safe house. The only women's refuge in New Zealand at that time was in Christchurch. Rivers helped found New Zealand's first North Island Women's Refuge in the Hutt Valley, despite receiving opposition from church groups concerned that women's refuges damaged families. Rivers then led the Social Policy Unit in the Ministry of Works and Development, where she was responsible for assessing the community impact of large development projects.

Since 2015 Rivers has chaired REAP (Rural Education Activities Programmes) Aotearoa, the national body representing the thirteen individual programmes.

Rivers has worked on food resilience, and in 2022 was a founding trustee of He Puāwai, which works in the Hutt Valley.