This was a big month for me as I spent the whole month in the UK visting mentoring programmes their and attending a conference. The conference was their national mentoring conference attended by 350 people from all round the UK. Mentoring is huge in the UK and very diverse. I was invited to present a workshop at the conference on how we recruit and screen male mentors. Like other parts of the world the UK people really struggle to recruit men so I guess it was no surprise to find my workshop was over subscribed, they had to turn 50 people away from it! The response was both amazing and deeply affirming of our work in NZ.
I had no idea how leading edge our working and method were, Big Buddy is way ahead of the UK in both our ability to recruit men and the sophistication in our screening methods. I visited many programmes and organisations after the conference and was very well received, they all wanted to pick my brains and get an insight into out methods. I thought I was going to the UK to learn but found myself teaching as much as learning. I learnt a lot besides teaching the Brits how we work. The majority of their mentoring agencies are wholly government funded and the strings attached to this money were often strangling emergant innovation. They all complained about heavy compliance costs associated with govt money. The more innovative orgs were getting private funding. It was a good lesson not to become too dependant on government funding or to at least negotiate government contracts on better terms. Their approach to replicating mentoring programmes across the country was quite different to what I had expected and to the way we are attempting to do it. The vast majority of their programmes were small and focused in one area. They have larger funding or network bodies that manage the development of new programmes.
Notable differences between UK programme and ours;
1. They cannot recruit men, averaging 10 % male mentors at best.
2. They have a very strong paranoia or men, suspecting most men are abusers, but their screening seemed inadequate to me.
3. They monitor matches heavily, weekly written reports from mentors, etc half their staff are focused purely on monitoring.
4. They pay their mentors expenses , average GBP 10 per week. 5. They cut off all matched after 9- 12 months. In Short a very different way of working and in this climate it was understandable why they saw Big Buddy NZ as leading edge and why I had 4 people ask if they could move to NZ and work for us! There is a clear opportunity for us to export the Big Buddy system to the UK, but first things first lets roll it our over NZ first.
As I do every month, I have worked with some incredible women in face to face counselling during May. I find this aspect of my role at EDEN very rewarding and it is a privilege to witness somebody making changes that reduces the influence of body dissatisfaction or disordered eating. In addition to face to face counselling, EDEN runs support groups for women with eating issues and in May I was involved in providing information to potential participants and getting the new group off the ground. A support group is a great option for sharing experiences and learning from other people in similar situations and can also help with reducing a sense of shame and isolation which can accompany eating issue problems. It’s really important to me to balance all of my co-ordination and management roles at EDEN with being involved in service provision and with members of the community seeking support and information. While the former is stimulating and challenging, it is the latter that truly sustains me. It’s a constant tension and an ongoing learning process to manage my time spent in each role.
There has been plenty of writing/researching in May with the content for the two EDEN conference presentations being finalised. EDEN’s school programme is the focus of one of the presentations and the other looks at cybersafety and eating issues and has been developed in partnership with the Internet Safety Group. If you want to find out more about these conferences they are both being held in Dunedin at the end of June. The first is called called ‘Body Matters’ and the second is the ‘New Zealand Health Teachers’ conference. Deb, EDEN’s youth worker, will be representing the agency and delivering our presentations.
I have also been extremely busy on the book project I am working on with my colleague and author Helen Malson in the UK. We are co-editing a volume called Feminist Approaches to Dis/Ordered Eating with publishing house Routledge. The book will showcase current perspectives from an international selection authors working in this innovative field and is due out early in 2008. Alongside my editing role for this volume, I am also co-writing a chapter with Jane Tyrer (Education Worker) about EDEN’s work. This is a fantastic opportunity to describe what EDEN does, how we do it and to link this in with some of the developments in feminist theorising about disordered eating. I will be spending a few days with co-editor Helen when I visit the UK in July and we will be working through the 20 chapters that have been submitted and all the feedback that we will be providing to the 20 contributing authors!
Finally, EDEN completed the changes and printing of the Dove Self Esteem Fund resource, BodySense. This is a great booklet that contains information and activities about critical media literacy and body image for young people. EDEN intends to deliver the workshop to students and to train teachers and other health professionals to use it in their roles. If you would like to find out more about BodySense or how EDEN might work with your school, then please visit the website for information and contact contact details www.eden.org.nz
May has been another busy month. This month I focussed on recruiting new supporters for the coalition, by attending the Plunket Centenary Conference in Dunedin. There we signed up another 200 supporters who are keen to see children placed at the centre of our nation’s considerations.
In preparation for the conference we printed new brochures. These have been well received, because they are easier to read and more colourful than our old brochures.
Following the conference, we joined in the celebrations of the passage of the Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Bill. With the bill through parliament we also engaged in discussions about the need for public education about the law change, and for increased investment in positive parenting programmes.
In addition, we have continued political discussions about the potential for political parties to work more constructively in the interests of children, recognising that if children are doing well we all do well!
With our conference only a few months away, the month of May also saw us busy preparing funding applications, identifying potential speakers and starting to firm up our plans for the event.
Another new month already! Work in the performing arts with DZIAH never dies. That catch phrase is coming to pass, when there is always something to look forward to and no room for boredom; having opportunities not only in Auckland and NZ – but overseas.
I had the privilege of going to dance in the Gold Coast as part of a ‘Make a Wish Foundation’ Team. This team are a bunch of lovely people with a heart for kids with sicknesses and health issues and it was a real eye opener in terms of the things that we take for granted – our health. Meeting the kids was an awesome experience and just chilling out with them having fun. They loved the dancing and some even joined in while others watched silently in awe. Air NZ helped with airfares and the Make a Wish Foundation put a lot of time and money into it. It was also good networking time with people wanting to help us in our future endeavours.
Our Dance Program after school with the development crews have had some good consistency and we’re trying to work on the 20 we have at the moment. We are trying to teach not only dance but life skills; how to turn up on time, committing to coming every week, listening and interacting. Progression is going well and we have a lot of great feedback.
I had an awesome opportunity to speak at a business conference in Christchurch, at an event called Thrive Mainland. There were a number of inspirational speakers and people with successful businesses. I learnt a lot in one day. I talked about having the DZIAH to Dream and that we can achieve what we set out to do, by just putting your mind to it … Inspiring our youth and giving something back to our community. Thanks to the Vodafone NZ Foundation – I’m living the Dream
