Today sees the return of The Daily Post's Our People profiles for 2012 following a break over the summer period. Now in its third year, the popular series meets locals from a wide range of backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities and beliefs whose ages range across the decades.
Rotorua's Youth Activities Officer Jill Campbell is passionate about young people and the need to give them a local voice.
HOLY JUMPIN' Josephers, it's such a hard ask to pigeonhole Jill Campbell we won't attempt to try.
Rather let us outline why she defies conventional labelling.
As a Nova Scotian she's passionate about her Scottish heritage, has a life-long affinity with Canada's First Nations people and worked among Australia's Aboriginals, has lived the West Indian Rastafarian lifestyle, is married to a Maori and young people are her passion.
The latter's easy to explain: she's been Rotorua's Youth Activities Officer since 2003. As for the "holy jumpin' Josephers" with which we opened, we cribbed it from her personal vocabulary. It's an expression that seems uniquely hers ... spend time with her and it's as catching as a cold.
Born, raised and educated on Canada's Cape Breton Island, Jill Campbell's a rare breed in these parts. Cape Breton Island may seem a huge leap from New Zealand and its own cultural heritage but Jill insists the two are startlingly similar.
Brought up in and around the island's Mi'kmaq (pronounced Meg war) people, indigenous to Canada's Atlantic provinces, she was immersed from childhood in talk of treaty claims, rights and injustices. "I felt I owed it to myself and my Mi'kmaq friends to know about their history. If you are calling yourself Canadian you have to know that our history didn't start with Canada. It started with the First Nations people. I was educated first hand by being taken into their homes and accepted by these people."
She becomes anxious that might sound "tacky, as if it's a white girl speaking". Assured that it doesn't in the slightest, she tells of always being drawn to her Mi'kmaq friends ... "because I'm interested in my own heritage and because I was brought up to appreciate that heritage and respect others".
In her university holidays Jill Campbell's horizons broadened beyond Cape Breton Island, going "out west where the oilmen were" to work in jobs as diverse as waitressing, and a golf course groundsperson. "I didn't know a darn thing about golf, I even worked shovelling s*** on an ostrich farm."
Aiming for a major in Celtic Scottish history she'd expected to go to Scotland. Instead she came to New Zealand, where an aunt's husband had been transferred to. "I'd met Kiwis while working on the golf course and thought they were lovely people."
She gravitated to Queenstown "working, partying and loving life", arriving at the time Lord Of The Rings was being filmed in the region. "It was absolutely buzzing." Next stop Australia and an Aboriginal community inland from Brisbane, working as a volunteer teacher.
Back in Canada, via Suva, she was, she admits, "a bit lost". Still smitten by the urge to travel she joined an environmental youth exchange programme, spending five months on the West Indies island of St Lucia. "I thought I was worldly until I went to St Lucia and realised this was an absolutely different challenge. It challenged my comfort zones absolutely. Suddenly I was eating fish heads from a street barbeque while buses where whizzing by with reggae pumping out of them and the Rastas [Rastafarians] were washing their dreads [dreadlocks] in the sea. I lived with a family who'd grab a chicken, pluck it and put it in the pot for tea. For the first time in my life I was in the minority."
Relocating from the warmth of the West Indies to midwinter Ottawa was a quantum climatic jump. "I'd go and lie on tanning beds to get warm, I was frozen for a month."
Regardless, it was a move that allowed her to re-embrace her homeland's First Nations people, working as youth co-ordinator for the Canadian capital's Native Friendship Centre. She loved it but the hours were long, the job filling seven days out of seven. Four years on, in 2003, she admits to a "massive" bout of burn-out.
"I'd left part of my soul in New Zealand. My thirst for adventure remained, so I came back, not really knowing anyone [her aunt's family had moved on,] no job. On reflection it was sheer craziness."
While staying on a farm near Cambridge she was drawn to an on-line advertisement for her present Rotorua District Council role. By then, she'd completed her final paper and graduated with a BA in history and was considered the perfect fit. "I had a suitcase and that was it. I bought myself a car when I got to Rotorua."
She'd been with the council mere days when she met husband-to-be, Chris Campbell, in the canteen. He was in the engineering department and a Maori of Ngai Tahu, Te Arawa and Tuhoe descent. "I told him my mother's maiden name was Campbell too. We were both brought up by our grandmothers ... there were a lot of similarities, but differences too. He was more of an elite sportsperson while I was absolutely and utterly social."
In 2009 they married in her mother's Cape Breton back yard, making her an instant stepmum of twins, a boy and a girl, now 15.
Caring for them on alternative weeks, they're the ideal sounding board for her focus on youth. Working closely with local neighbourhoods, it's Jill Campbell who's been the driving force behind the recently opened youth parks in Fordlands and Western Heights. Another's planned for Koutu, a fourth will be in the city's eastern suburbs.
She also oversees the youth council, facilitating its appointments. Regardless of its participants' age, she's adamant it's an organisation vital to the community district-wide, giving young people a voice and a platform from which to be heard.
Through it, members have championed the youth park concept, contributed to the district's draft annual plans and 10-year plan.
"I think young people are just waiting for challenges and opportunities. They are not only part of a family but of the bigger picture." That said, she rues the prevalence of family violence within Rotorua and does not shy away from the bogey of the city's too-high youth crime statistics.
However, she's confident hers is a job that can help - however indirectly - address such unpalatable realities.
"My role is not so much with the parents but making sure our organisations are offering the services young people need. Just as adults are varied and different so are young people and they can't just be grouped as youths. They have many components, talents, hopes, dreams and goals. Sadly, some of our young people have not been given the ability to dream and set goals."
This compels us to ask why Jill Campbell has such a passion for those yet to reach adulthood. The answer shoots back at the pace of gunfire. "I like young people because they challenge me. When you least expect it they can come up with the most insightful, honest things. They have no hidden agendas."
JILL CAMPBELL
Born: Sydney, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.
Education: All on the island with a population of 100,000. Graduated from university with a BA in history focusing on Canada's First Nations people.
Family: Mother and brother in Cape Breton (her father died when she was a child and grandparents helped with her upbringing), husband Chris, who's recently graduated with a sport and recreation degree, 15-year-old steptwins.
Interests: Travel, food ("I love a good hangi."), cultural values and beliefs, Scottish music and dancing. ("I grew up dancing and love the bagpipes and the fiddle.") Sport, soccer (she has played for Ngongtaha), and rugby in particular. "I played rugby in high school. I was an appalling flanker. Now I've come to New Zealand I know a hell of a lot more about rugby." Hosted Canada's World Cup team at the Energy Events Centre.
On connections with Canada's First Nations People and Maori: "There are a lot of similarities, Manaakitanga, both love welcoming people, they share the same humour, sarcasm, cheekiness."
Personal philosophies: "Live it up, dance like no one is watching." "The only thing in your way is you."
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