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Researcher and social justice advocate Celia Lashlie is the author of two best-selling books. Her first book The Journey to Prison: Who goes and why was published in 2002 and was followed in 2005 with the hugely successful He'll be OK: Growing Gorgeous Boys into Good Men, a book based on the Good Man Project she undertook in 25 boys' schools in New Zealand. This book has since been released in both Australia and the UK. Her third book The Power of Mothers: Releasing our Children was published in 2010. In it, Celia picks up where she left off with The Journey to Prison and on the basis of work she has done in New Zealand communities since leaving Christchurch Women's Prison in 1999, explores in more depth her belief that the mothers, grandmothers and matriarchs at the centre of at-risk families hold the key to changing the lives of the children within those families. The first female prison officer to work in a male prison in New Zealand, starting at Rimutaka Prison in December 1985, Celia became the Manager of Christchurch Women's Prison in 1996. Since leaving Corrections in 1999, she has continued to work in a number of areas linked to at-risk children, her work focusing on ways in which to stem the flow of so many of New Zealand's young people into prison. The two tenets underpinning her work, are her belief that all children are born filled with magic, their own unique brand of magic and that communities, rather than central government, hold the answers to the problems New Zealand is facing in terms of the negative statistics of child abuse, prison numbers and social disconnection. Celia has a degree in Maori and Anthropology, is the mother of two adult children and now has two gorgeous grandsons. She lives in Wellington. |
Celia's third book, The Power of Mothers: Releasing our Children, is now available in booksellers and libraries throughout NZ and Australia. > more info  |