Introduction
Since the inception of 237 as a community initiative 2008 has produced a very fine tuned programme from an operational viewpoint. This programme has now succeeded in creating and delivering its own community development model using youth as a foundation. The success of this programme is the inclusiveness of community in decision making and ideally the implementation of the programme itself.
Community Development
The amount of networking that has gone on in achieving collaboration from other agencies has been conducted in a meticulous manner. The reason has been to ensure that the involvement of our people is undisturbed and they have a sense of self determination. For so long agencies have dictated what is best for low socio economic communities such as Waitangirua, where consultation is created without real depth in relationship building.
This has been the challenge for 237 to protect the vision and to ensure the people’s ideas become policy in the servicing of our young people and their whole families. Relationships were built over a period of 3- 4 years leading to this point where the community viewed my family and I as neighbours who had the best interests of our people at heart.
Streets Ahead 237
The work undertaken leading to the best programme delivered since 237 began has been phenomenal. Enclosed are two narratives written by two youth leaders contracted for 237 October which clearly outline their emotions and passion for the programme.
The hour long documentary will highlight the community development created by 237 including our stand against youth violence, youth offending and youth gangs throughout New Zealand. 2008 has been a huge year since securing the Vodafone Award allowing the time and space for me to create this programme and develop it to the next stage. Whilst I celebrate the progress made I remember the sacrifices endured by my family to obtain quality relationships with a people that others only wished to know from 9-5.
Today we have achieved what rarely occurs in the eyes of mainstream and that is reaching youth gangs. These young people are not hard to reach, if anything agencies are hard to teach. 237 now through its own community development model has connected with young people from different youth gangs, and having their parents work in the kitchen, having police interact to the point where they become part of the family, having traction in local and central government, having keynote speakers fly in from all over the country at their own expense, being mentioned in media all over the country at least once a week, having current Mongrel Mob members remove their colours and ask for assistance to work with their whanau, connecting whole families to resources around health, education and employment and doing presentations on Streets Ahead 237 at numerous agencies and conferences by invitation.
The Future
237 is now looking to the future and securing interests from corporate companies and philanthropists to create sustainability. An external evaluation will take place from the end of November through to May 2009 funded by the Vodafone World of Difference programme. Our goal at the beginning of this programme was to secure a youth centre with our own vehicles and resources to implement our own home-grown community development model.
The interest from other agencies and communities from New Zealand are numerous and have expressed an interest in producing a National community development model using youth as a foundational platform. This is achievable and I believe 237 not only have a generic template for communities but also the specifications required for communities like ours.
The main focus is now the sustainability of 237 from a funding perspective but also as the peoples programme to decide its destiny. The options for 237 will be presented to the people in the first week of December when we can all get together and decide what is best for this programme and the people it serves.
I have been continuing with development of the new whole school approach programme this month. This is a comprehensive programme aimed at promoting healthy, respectful relating as a means to preventing (sexual) violence and coercion. It is envisioned that this programme will, if successful, have wide ranging positive effects. It involves term-long delivery of a programme to year 9s that focuses on healthy relating, how gender impacts on relating and ways of being in the world- a key focus here will be on critical media literacy, particularly around music videos as they are a genre of media of particular salience for young people.
There will also be considerable focus on developing skills to be active, safe bystanders. A further key component of the programme will be on having men of all ages engaged and interested in working towards ending violence against women and children- it is a challenge they must take up- the violence is being perpetrated mostly by males and therefore needs to be stopped and challenged by males. There will also be prevention/information delivered to both school staff and caregivers of the young people- young people cannot shoulder the burden of preventing violence- adults need to be doing this work just as much, if not more. There will also be a school wide, student driven, media campaign around respect and gender. Finally, school policies will also be reviewed and amended as required to support the aims of the programme.
We are unfortunately still waiting to hear about funding for this (there has been a hold up in hearing about funding since the change of government) but are feeling hopeful. We are aiming to pilot and evaluate the programme in one school in 2009, in 2010 that same school again and with an additional school. We have had quite a bit of interest from schools- I was initially concerned about whether schools would readily take this programme up due to the commitment they have to make- but was heartened by how motivated the schools are to promoting healthy, respectful relating and reducing sexual violence.
I have had a few moments this month where I have felt slightly overwhelmed by the enormity of the problem of sexual violence and disrespectful sexual relating. However, I am pleased to report that I am still holding on to a lot of hope that things can and will change- and feel confident that the work we are doing at RPE is making positive inroads towards prevention.
Okay so I rested up and reflected last month and this month has just been jam packed. With the next Passion holiday program having just finished it’s full on again for both me and the youth committee. I must say this by far has been the best holiday program this year and big ups to the youth committee for all their hard work especially Junior Salu and Ebony Kelly who have been leaders learning and growing in our program and for the first time we handed full reign over them. We not only employed them to run the program for the two weeks but they took full control of everything.
We had always run the program in OTARA but it appeared there was a lot going on during the school holidays for youth in OTARA and youth living in Clover Park (where our office is based) had nothing available to them so the youth committee decided to target that area and it was a great success. Not only did we have the highest numbers this year but we also had more involvement from parents and excellent feedback.
The youth committee also thought outside the square and instead of having our tradition performance indoors they decided to put it on outdoors and also incorporate a family fun day with a theme of “Being Passionate about the place you live”. It was excellent to see the youth but even more so Junior and Ebony take on the challenge of running everything and a lot was learned but the opportunity greatly embraced. As a result we now have more young people passionate about having one more program before Christmas which they will be working on proposing to our Board of Trustees.
It also came at a good time just before exams. It motivated a lot of the youth to work hard for their exams coming up due to the many new positive relationships they built during the program. So this month has really been focused on supporting our youth to run the program, deliver it then take out assess it once again see what didn’t work what did and implement the necessary changes or improvements that need to be done for the next program. With the year fast coming to end I’m looking forward to seeing what’s going to happen in the last two months. Keep posted!
The first week of October was the 2008 NZ Boxing Championships, held in Wellington. For a club only going for three years, we were very fortunate to have five representatives from the NBA, and out of it we received three silver medals which is a great achievement. I was made the Wellington coach, and the Wellington team won the highest points for the most wins at a national competition. None of the boys got hurt, no marks on them, and they came home having bonded together really well. They were very enthusiastic about their experience and are looking forward to the next one.
Unfortunately one of my boys I suspected using dope. He was a sitter to win a national title (he had beaten the boy that wound up winning at the Championship, earlier on in the year) and we withdrew him. I’m still dealing with his father and the lad regarding having regular blood tests, even though he has said he will never do it again. He is still in our academy. There are battles still to be fought and won.
Having the championship at that time was good because we celebrated my 60th birthday the day after. It was a great evening spent with special friends and family.
The week after that I took off to USA with the help of Vodafone’s financial support. I was an invited guest at the US Armed Forces boxing competition and visited eight boxing gyms from one side of America, to the other. I attended a professional fight with a huge audience, and the referee invited me up onto the stage with four world boxing champions and “Billy the Kid from Naenae”! We got gloves signed by world champions which will be great for our fundraising auction this year. The contacts I reaffirmed are very enthusiastic to have my boys visit their airforce academy in Colorado Springs for no cost, which would be an eye-opener, and a fantastic experience for them.
It has been a very busy month, as usual, and we continue to be so grateful to Vodafone for their support.
October has been a funny month; on one hand I’m trying to pencil everything in before the end of the year and on the other hand I’m spending most of my time focused on next year and beyond. Our team are on a high after finishing our 07-08 SKIP project which was extremely successful at engaging teen parent families with positive parenting principles, messages and resources. Our next SKIP project has a number of new youth leadership initiatives including supporting small teen parent groups all around the place who are doing the work themselves. We’re going to bring them together so they can share ideas and make a resource kit. Our new SKIP year kicks off in early December with a summer survival quide for teen parents of under five year olds.
We’re hoping to start a research project early next year; the research will continue my work from this year focusing on some very important questions: What are the needs of teen parents in Auckland? How can we change to set up a new centre and what does effective support look like? How can we as a society work together to achieve this? We’re very excited and with our fingers and toes crossed we’re waiting to hear back from funders before we get things started Jan 09.
This month the WoD 08 crew met in Auckland and had the privilege to meet the new WoD 09 recipients. We got to awhi them at the Vodafone Foundation awards evening -it was really neat to watch them soak up the positive atmosphere and start to belive that it’s really happened to them and they desire it! It’s with huge pride and a little jealously I wish the new crew all the best for 2009. Going to the WoD awards and writing my quarterly report this month to the VNZF board reminded me how quickly the year has flown by and how far our project has come because of WoD. We’ve developed our strategic plan, strengthened our internal support for staff, engaged large numbers of teen parent families, applied for new funding, worked with media and I have new inspiration from the UK. These were all things we could only wish for this time last year.
I’m inspired by politics (some results more than others) to write my WoD last 100 day goals, starting with – not holding back from talking to everyone and anyone who believes in investing in the potential of young parents and their children. As we witnessed in America, every single person can make a difference if we want to make positive change.
See ya.
This month continued on much like the others with one very notable change – my boss and CEO Janis resigned leaving a huge hole for not only the Foundation but for me and my work.
Janis was my support and sounding board for this programme providing much needed feedback as well as questioning my reporting and findings.
You don’t know what you got till it’s gone alright!
Highlights for the month included a visit to Wayne Poutoa and the Streets Ahead 237 programme in Porirua. It’s certainly a great programme and Wayne runs it with all the passion and style that is the man himself.
Another was a day spent with next year’s WOD recipients at Vodafone in Auckland – an outstanding bunch, all with very exciting work.
Something else that surfaced for us was an opportunity to be involved in a fundraising event featuring Sir Bob Geldof. Geldof of course is well known for his music but also for his work with Live Aid and his passion for working with and for the poor and starving millions in Africa.
Something like this to raise money, as well as profile, for us was way too good to pass up – the event is in November so read about it next time.
I am now doing clinics in 2 high schools and one alternative education site. This is great for the youth and is nice getting out into the community. I am seeing a lot of young men who we know don’t always access health care so this has to be a positive move.
We have a nursing student in her second year and a second year social work student on placement. They love the atmosphere at WAVES and we love having them with us as well.
The schools are also asking me to do sexual health and contraceptive talks with students. This was also really worth while and an opportunity for the students to get to know me. The clinics the following week were full!!
Now the new board are getting into gear after taking over in June they are starting to arrange meetings with potential funders for next year. One of my objectives for the year was to be sustainable in the future. We have had many meetings and strategic planning days with the board. This month saw a meeting with the WAVES board, the District Health Board and all three Primary Health Organisations. An interesting meeting and all staff also attended. Questions were asked about increasing funding, but this was declined at this stage, a work in progress and important relationships are being built.
I am also finalising a piece of research about young people’s attitudes and knowledge around sexual health and contraception. It was a major effort from me as I interviewed 54 young people and asked them 54 questions. To enter the data and make sense of it has taken me forever but it is almost complete. The main thing I can see coming out of it, is we need to be delivering sexual health education early and in a way that young people can make sense of.
The young people at WAVES understand that next year will be tough for WAVES as we do not have the support of Vodafone after Feb. The DHB are going to pay for the nurse and Dr, but not the space, and not the youth programmes. The peers have got together and are really trying to get community support. They have arranged a debate with all 5 election candidates. That took place on the 1st November so will include that in the November update…lots happening now as we really try and get WAVES on the map and funding to support us.
The “It’s My Life” group component of the Adolescent Resilience Programme concluded this month with positive results for many of the young women who participated. This multi dimensional approach worked particularly well for the girls who experience high anxiety and a lack of self confidence as a result of their abuse. The group enabled the girls to interact socially in a relaxed and supportive environment. It is well known that adolescence can be the most difficult time for peer relationships as many teenagers struggle to fit in to the group.
This sense of marginalisation and being different can be amplified when a young person has experienced abuse. Several of the young women attending the group have found it very difficult to engage in social activities and talk to their peers. The group enabled the girls to be safely exposed to their social anxiety as the girls encouraged each other to join in and at times shared their methods for overcoming shyness and dealing with relationship dynamics.
One young woman who has been significantly traumatised by her experience of long term abuse was progressing very slowly in individual therapy. When I initially met with her she presented as much younger than her years, she barely talked or repeated what I said and sat with a fixed smile on her face or burst suddenly into sobs. She had very poor connections with her siblings and became easily frustrated and aggressive if people did not meet her expectations and stick to her plans.
Nearing the end of the group she asked if she could contribute to the session by teaching the others a self soothing technique that she found useful and she asked if she could approach one of the other participants and let them know how shy she had once been and offer her support. Of course the group has not completely changed this girl’s life it has merely enabled her to experience her self differently as someone who is resilient and has skills that she can use and pass on.
I continue to work with her and she has her good days and bad days but the good days are more frequent and she can talk of friendship and connection. As she wrote “Good things I have learnt in this group, It’s My Life, Solving Problems, Being Calm, Learning to Relax when I’m angry.”
I’ll conclude this month with a quote from another of the participants.
“I have learned so many new life skills and have improved my relationships with my family. Being in this group has been relaxing and comfortable with each individual because we are all in the same boat and understand each other better than maybe others. Never a dull moment!!”
