April has been very busy indeed with the planning of the programme and recruiting new young people. Alot of time was spent establishing relationships with youth gang leaders prior to the event. This has been fruitful in seeing opposing youth gang representatives attend Streets Ahead 237.

This month has been action packed with the creation of our second DVD which will be launched on the 23rd May at Maraeroa Marae Health Clinic. We are pleased to announce that of the five stages that I have sought the freedom to purse through the Vodafone award, four of them have been accomplished. The fourth stage being the funding for a new Youth Centre.

So here it is in a nutshell we have secured ongoing funding for the initial Streets Ahead 237 programme run five times a year, we have created a space for youth leadership by placing our young people in advisory groups for Council, CCDHB, and other local youth advisory groups. Next we have created a youth work course to be taught in a tertiary institution for the Streets Ahead youth committee numbering 23 new students and fourth the youth centre funding as mentioned above. The beauty of these achievements are that of the young people who now have access to these resources ninety percent came from youth gangs, gang families, gang associates in CYFS custody, on community service and police curfew.

I feel privileged to be working alongside an awesome team ranging from our clinic staff, to community, Police, CYFS, MP’s, city council and the young people themselves. Thank you Vodafone for allowing me to pursue my dream which is now a reality. The final stage to reach comes in the form of respite care where the proposal is in its final stages.

Our recent programme was one of the best we have had with awesome keynote speakers that included our Mayor Jenny Brash, Tofiga Fepuleai from the Laughing Samoans and the Hon. Winnie Laban just to name a few.

I truly believe that Streets Ahead 237 has the ability to and will turn community into family. I hope you are all well and I wish I could explain in detail the journey I have been on in the last five months but I know that time is coming.

Well there have been a lot of mile stones this month. Where do I start??? Well the significant things that happened this month were:
Passion 3 day Leadership Camp at Orere Point to prepare for the “PASSION” (performing Arts Success Stories in our neighbourhoods) holiday program and of course the PASSION HOLIDAY PROGRAMME. I’ve had to let my admin work take a bit of a back seat for the month due to the high volume of events and programmes to be delievered and lack of staffing. Our leadership camp was awesome.

We took a core group of 18 young people from Otara who we identified as leaders for a 3 day camp where they would be able to do some brainstorming and preparation work for the PASSION holiday programme as well as gain some new leadership skills. One of the highlights of this camp was collaborating with TYLA and South Seas health care to deliver the best stuff we could and share resources.

They youth facilitated and ran their own sessions relating to PASSION and one of things we did was remove a curfew so it was left up to the leaders to make choices and take responsibility for themselves and each other. You’d think with no curfew all havoc will break loose! But No! We left and the Camp Manager said they were the best. Some of them may have stayed up chatting till the early hours but still got up at 6am regardless for their early morning runs.

They managed to plan and schedule their two week programm and all in all the camp was awesome. The following well PASSION began and boy was it the most fun for those two week school holidays! Some of things the youth did included, salsa lessons, abstract art workshop, beatmaking workshop, digital story telling workshop, dj workshop, sports activities, practices for their production and guest visit from ardijah on the Friday of the production and they helped inspire the youth and split them into groups to critique their performances and help them improve.

We had an awesome turn out and a good number of parents of each of the young people involved turned up. As well as that the young people were the MC’s, stage managers, sound setup, computer technitions and front door entry people to name a few. It is a performing arts program run for youth by youth and it indeed was just that right to the end.

My highlight that night was seeing one of the 15 year old boys in the group, who had been working on a Marvel Montage Video for 8 months, have the opportunity to preview his work on big screen to our community as well as seeing one of the young girls in the group act for the first time her true life story and give an awesome speech at the end.

It’s this kind of stuff that makes my work all worth it. The young girl in particular is a role model and success story from otara that young people who have made wrong choices and have arrived at the end of the grave can resurrect themselves and live in new positive choices that not only affect them but their family as well, as she was one of those. Now that the holidays are over I’m having to catch up on my admin work but I don’t mind the two works was well worth it!!!

The awesome thing now is that some of the new young people that joined the holiday program are now part of our youth committee so we’re looking forward to keep those ties with the new youth and building new quality relationships with them and looking to support them in making new choices for themselves for the future. The passion showcase will feature on our youtube this month so keep posted.
www.youtube.com/canopytrustotara

www.bebo.com/canopytrustotara

www.fundraiseonline.co.nz/canopytrust

April has been a really mixed month with our work on the ground with teen parents and also our work as community leaders and influencers. Our term one Young Mother’s Support Programme has finished; this was a wonderfully rich group of mothers who supported each other, were eager to make new friendships, source new skills and have some time out. We’re now in the process of gearing up for our new Parenting Seminar Series, starting in May. We’ve taken advantage of this time to host some peer support training which allowed mums to connect again with each other and have some space to think about how they might like to support new teen parents to join in. Currently, it’s a really busy time and we’re all developing programme designs and fostering relationships with both key speakers and young mums.

Unfortunately Tauafu, our Young Women’s Advocate, has had to resign for personal reasons, which is a blow to our project. Tauafu started in January, and in her short time with us she brought to her work her egerness to support teen parents, her openness to learn, her wealth of knowledge of Paskifa culture and launage, and her great sense of humor. We wish her and family well and best wishes. This has meant we’re shifting things around to attact the right person and to keep the momentum of the project rolling.

Something I have really enjoyed this month has been linking with two of our funders to explore the outcomes connected to our work with teen parents and identify where we’re going.

1. I was fortunate to spend a day with the Families Commission Auckland Team, FC CEO Peter Curry and four agencies who are involved in the Families Commission Valuing Parenting Project. We were able to share our outcomes and learnings from our first parenting discussion groups and we were also involved in planning future topics. I particularly enjoyed hearing how parents responded to the invitation to take part, and the importance they placed on being given a voice. It was a great day which left me feeling valued by the Commission and that of our parents’ contribution.
2. Shelley and I have been busy desgning our presentation for a National SKIP Hui, so we’re off to Wellington tomorrow to join other community inflencers to share our project outcomes and where we are hoping to move in the future. I have really enjoyed having this time working alongside Shelley, being able to explore our outcomes over the past four years, thinking creatively about how we wanted to present our work and share our key outcomes – all nerves aside, it going to be a blast.

It was really neat to hear from some of the young mums that you’re checking out my monthly Vodafone blog – so to all you young mums out there YOU ROCK!

WAVES Rocks!!! We are well on our way to meeting all thel the outcomes that I had set up to do. We are at full capacity and hope to be able to form close relationships with other service providers of youth development and support and co locate to larger premises.

This month I have been working on a strategic plan for the next three years for the WAVES service. I have formed a draft and each week the staff brain storm ideas and future direction. We have our 1st AGM in June so we hope to have the draft completed by this date for the board to consider for approval.

The WAVES team presented at the New Plymouth District Council at their annual funding expo. This attracted over 200 people in the community that seek ongoing funding for their services. We presented a vide diary of our journey from the start until the opening day at WAVES. The young people themselves acted for this and dressed up in suits as funders and planners, always saying no!! We then had a young man who was acting as Vodafone NZ Foundation and he threw money at us. A humerous look at the struggle, but also supported and mentioned Voadafone’s support of WAVES.

I went out to a local marae and presented to the youth peers in all high schools, information on sexual and reproductive health.

We have also met with Bryce Wastney a local musician who is helping WAVES plan a major fundraising event in August. It will be a fun youth day and have music, movies, food, dance and fun for young people to attend. Proceeds will come to WAVES Youth development team.
I continue to advocate for young people and this often puts me in the spotlight. Our local Ministry of Socail Development is proud of zero unemployment figures for youth in New Plymouth, yet the reality we see is dozens of young people not engaged in employment or education and relying on family, friends or crime for an income. We will continue to support young people and assit them with their goals in life.

We continue to present weekly to other health and support providers and were delighted to host for the second time Judge Becroft.

Numbers of young people accessing WAVES are increasing and we are planning more activity focused programmes.

Third month in to the project and ideas are beginning to come together. The “Happiness and its Causes” conference was very inspirational and came at the just right time, as I was beginning to feel very isolated researching alone at home. One of the stand out points that I took away was from Tal Ben-Shahar Ph.D, Positive Psychology lecturer from Harvard, who reminded me that it is the questions that we ask ourselves that create our reality. This is not to say that bad things don’t happen to us or that we should continually look on the bright side of life no matter what, but that in searching for the learning, the coping, the skills, the connections, I can generate a sense of resilience with my clients. Resilience that creates protection and reduces the risk of further abuse.
During the conference, I approached Dr. Martin Seligman and briefly discussed the Adolescent Resilience Programme with him. He had not heard of any other group talking a resilience approach to trauma and abuse. Dr Seligman had kindly offered to send me some of his manuals to assist with my project. The conference has enabled me to broaden my resources and I have been able to link in with people working with adolescents in Australia and the States, who have generously agreed to support my work and make their resources available.
I have begun to develop the programme interventions, this is the exciting and creative part of the work, and I expect that the first draft will be complete in six weeks. The programme is based on a multi-dimensional intervention approach. Initially, I will combine family therapy with an adolescent group programme and then look to the community to provide the resources required to support and sustain the changes.

With the help of the WATCS CEO, we are looking at ways to develop funding that will sustain the project into next year, so in the next few months I will be presenting the outline of the programme and expected results to several funding providers. I continue to enjoy the work and have had moments of true excitement, joy and fear this month.