Southside 'til we die: growing Polycultural leaders for South Auckland

In the village of Moana's ancestors, leaders are made.

They are warriors, armed with creativity and bravery; alofa and reciprocity.

They are born to serve their people.

As Moana starts university she is called to lead her family, but what does it mean to lead in South Auckland?

The young leaders of the Black Friars will talanoa about their latest project which brought together 60 young brown leaders from 10 South Auckland schools to develop a culturally embedded and responsive understanding of leadership. Through talanoa, fono, workshops, rehearsals, experience days and lots of pizza, they've shared their stories, drawing on creative processes from hula, hip-hop, siva, tau'olunga, spoken word, fagogo, social media, design, rap and song.

Last year these young brown scholars were storytellers. In 2018 they took their place as tuakana - leaders - guiding the waka of the next cohort of Southside Risers. This is their story.

This will be an interactive workshop which will require you to use an electronic device, either a mobile phone, laptop or tablet. The workshop will be facilitated in two parts where you will have the opportunity to complete online activities such as; interactive videos, building your very own Cultural Legacy Statement and entering a problem into a Problem-solving tool.

Part 1:  I AM – strengthening cultural identity

Research shows that by strengthening your cultural identity, you can increase your self-confidence and wellbeing. ‘I AM’ is a powerful tool designed to do just that; strengthen your self-worth, through culture. Ben will guide you through the online module during this workshop so that you can; discover your Pasifika cultural values, further, how you can apply them in today’s modern world.

During the first part of the workshop you will: (1) identify and explore your cultural values, (2) find out the benefits of walking in many worlds, (3) learn to problem solve when cultures collide, and (4) put your cultural values into action.

For more information, check out www.atumai.nz

Part 2:  The Aunty Dee problem solving tool

Aunty Dee is a free online tool for anyone who needs some help working through a problem or problems. It doesn’t matter what the problem is, you can us Aunty Dee to help you work through it.

Leilani will guide you through the Aunty Dee tool to work through a problem and because it’s a web-based tool, there are no big apps to download onto your mobile phone that uses up your devices storage space or your precious data.

It’s important to understand that Aunty Dee doesn’t generate content or provide answers for you, but instead guides you to think about and explore your problems in a structured way, helping you to find solutions before problems become overwhelming.

For more information, go to www.auntydee.co.nz

Engaging people on the margins: Collaborating with and for homeless youth

The presentation will share the innovative work happening within Auckland around responding to youth homelessness. Often we hear that young people from marginalised communities are hard to reach, difficult to engage. But what if it is us, the service providers and researchers that are difficult to engage with or hard to reach?

Involving youth in all aspects of homelessness system planning is essential to ensure that the design of the system is informed by young peoples lived experiences and demonstrate that the community values the expressed needs, self-awareness, community knowledge, and unique ideas of youth.

He Ao Kei o Ringa: Principles to guide youth engagement practice ensuring young people are safeguarded

How organisations can work to incorporate and enable youth voice and participation in their organisations.

Youth participation in local council

A youth worker's learning and reflection on how council can create opportunities for young people to feel safe to share their views and ideas to better their community. A glimpse into national strategies, international convention, participation models and challenges of youth engagement with council.

Whangarei Youth Space and the youth-adult partnership model

Youth-Adult Partnerships is a purposeful partnership between young people and adults. This is not only a framework model for supporting reciprocal learning and development between adults and youth, but for promoting engagement, participation and leadership.

This way of working is innovative and, as far as we know, unique in New Zealand. Whangarei Youth Space is purposefully working to embed authentic partnerships with young people at every level of our organisation. This approach brings fresh insights and new ideas, keeps us relevant and ensures that we deliver what young people want and need. It provides genuine learning opportunities for young people and significantly advances pathways for youth development and the transition to adulthood.

We have created an exciting resource to share our learnings with this model to the New Zealand youth sector and are keen to share this kaupapa with the hope other organizations can adopt this to support their mahi.

Truths from the Salvation Army

This presentation will be direct, simple and informative. It will present research, data, ideas and innovations from The Salvation Army that will hopefully impact those working in the youth development sector and positively impact their practice. Topics to be covered include some our research reports (the State of the Nation, and the State of Our Communities), views of Bible-based youth development in a secular Kiwi society, and reflections from our work with Maori, Pacific and minority communities throughout Aotearoa. This presentation is not about entertaining you. Ideally, it will challenge, equip and maybe even inspire you to keep doing amazing things in the youth sector!

The Mentor in Me: There's a tuakana in all of us! Practical tips and insights into decisive youth mentoring

As a trainer/facilitator with the NZ Youth Mentoring Network - as well as my own work with my own youth mentoring NGO - I have surveyed hundreds of students across Aotearoa asking the following question: "Would you agree with the statement - young people today are surrounded by adults - but not connected to adults?" 

Sadly, nearly 100 % of students surveyed agreed with that statement. The default mentors, the tuakana/teina relationships, the organic - 'once upon a time' mentors in the lives of our rangatahi are barely significant today.

My presentation passionately and convincingly both challenges and empowers the truth of 'the mentor within all of us'. To turn the tide of the lack of role models or mentors in the lives of our tamariki
I deliver the 'need to know' of Mentoring 101 with highly engaging and succinct examples and life stories. All in a high energy super positive delivery.

Mentor self-disclosure: What do they share and why does it matter?

My presentation will be based on my doctoral research on mentor self-disclosure in mentoring relationships with adolescents. Self-disclosure has been theoretically and empirically identified as an essential part of interpersonal relationships, yet little is known about what it looks like in mentoring contexts.

I will present data about mentor self-disclosure based on my research: What are mentors disclosing about? What encourages and discourages mentors from disclosing? What role do mentoring programs play? I will also explore some of the challenges and conundrums of self-disclosure, such as mentor expectations and disclosing about risk behaviours.

My bus stop will be dynamic and engaging, using activities to share my research findings and encourage attendees to think about their own experiences and attitudes towards self-disclosure.

Youth Mentoring Programmes in Aotearoa - Culture Matters

Significant interest and investment in formal youth mentoring programmes calls for programming underpinned by evidence-based best practice and research. Programmes developed internationally must consider appropriate cultural adaptations for the Aotearoa context. Engaging key community stakeholders, including families and cultural advisors, is a key essential element of culturally responsive practice.

The Campus Connections (CC) Aotearoa programme, originally developed by Colorado State University, is one such project that explored indigenous references of knowledge from the past and present relevant to local youth and their community. Critical to navigating 'community connections' and 'relationships' for transformative programme design was an understanding that youth and their whanau already possessed inherent funds of knowledge and had their own kete of strengths to draw from. This presentation reflects upon the role of culture, and the benefits and challenges of refining a youth mentoring programme to grow and promote the rich cultural identities of diverse youth.

The Power of Relationship

An encouraging reflection on the changes that occur in the heart, brain and behaviours of those engaged in meaningful relationship. Through spoken word, video and story the impacts of mentoring on both young person and mentor will be shared.

Supporting rainbow young people

LGBTQIA+ young people are part of every youth environment, even if you don't know it. As youth workers it is critical that we do the work to improve our rainbow competency so that we are able to provide safe and inclusive environments for all young people. Join InsideOUT to explore how you can best do this in your practice, no matter what youth work context you're in.

Choose your own evaluation adventure: A staged process for co-designing programme theories of change

Workshop facilitators will guide participants through a staged workshop process developed to involve community stakeholders in programme evaluation design. The process integrates empowerment, utilisation-focused, systems-thinking, evaluability assessment, and programme theory-driven evaluation principles to engender stakeholder empowerment through shared decision-making, organisational learning and deeper evaluative reasoning.

The staged format has been designed to flexibly respond to stakeholder needs and the practical constraints characteristic of many not-for-profit organisations. The three session facilitators (an academic evaluator, an evaluator in practice and a creative youth development practitioner/doctoral candidate) will draw on their experiences of employing this process with different youth development organisations, including a case that used arts-based methods, as they walk participants through the workshop stages.

We feel targeted because we are BLACK

This presentation is a follow up around an initiative I ran through my local youth centre around breaking barriers between young people and the local police. It discusses a certain process which I followed to ensure this problem could be looked into. Young individuals from our community felt as if they were being targeted by police due to their race. This presentation is at heart of our community as relationships between authorities and youth were very rocky, and crime rates and substance abuse had reached an all time high. Young people became prime suspects for police which led, a lot of the time, to these young people being stopped, asked questions and abused by police officers for no reason. The core of this presentation was built on the neglect and oppressive behaviours towards young people of refugee or migrant backgrounds.

Empower Youth: Addressing the underrepresentation of refugee youth in higher education

The presentation will highlight the issues around the inaccessibility of higher education opportunities for refugees and the series of steps Empower Youth takes to address these issues through their mentoring programme and workshops. Additionally it will illustrate how refugees in the programme have developed professionally and personally.

The presentation will address how the founder and CEO of Empower Youth has faced challenges within New Zealand's education system as a refugee and despite these challenges has persevered and achieved the award for Young New Zealander of the Year 2017, and has established a charity organisation, Empower Youth, that addresses the under-representation of refugees in higher education in New Zealand.

From Abroad to Aotearoa: Youth work with former refugees

Our presentation will give a snapshot into the work the Resettlement Youth Workers have been doing over the past 12 months with newly arrived former refugees across the country - from Auckland to Nelson. This includes the one-on-one time we spend with young people, connecting them with extra-curricular activities and service providers to meet their needs, as well as the group orientation events where they are given the opportunity to have fun, showcase their skills in talent shows and socialise with other youth.

As each young person differs and each geographical location has its own unique challenges, the snapshot will showcase the wide variety of work being done across Aotearoa. Underpinning the diversity of the work is a framework designed by the youth workers, all of whom are from refugee backgrounds themselves, which adapts pre-existing frameworks such as Te Ware Tapa Wha to meet the needs of former refugee youth.

Taking a stand against family violence: Supporting youth to become champions of change

Shine has a vision of safer homes in New Zealand for everyone, every day. As part of this vision the Shine in School programme takes a youth led, community mobilisation approach to work towards shifting attitudes from acceptance of family violence as inevitable, towards attitudes of seeing family violence as a preventable social issue. Alongside classroom lessons, we offer champion training which helps young people to develop skills to lead social actions, support their peers to have healthy relationships and remain safe at home. We apply a tailored, youth-centered approach so youth are further enabled to affect social change amongst their peers and wider community in a manner that they believe will benefit their community the most. Shine in School is founded upon the principles that young people have the capacity to inspire widespread generational and societal changes which will address, reduce and prevent family violence, at present and in the future.

Health, Schools and Communities

This panel will discuss the intersection between health and the school and community sectors. The panel brings together clinicians and educators to discuss how to work effectively with young people using healthy youth development principles. This is a chance for youth health clinicians to come together to discuss some of the challenges and opportunities when working in education and community settings, and how we can progress the field and enhance the wellbeing of the young people we see.

Christine Cammell will showcase a new school nursing website designed to support clinicians working in school environments.

Katie Fitzpatrick will discuss sexuality and health education in schools, and how schools can use the national curriculum policy (Sexuality education: A guide for principals, boards of trustees and teachers) to support youth.

Sue Bagshaw will discuss the role of health clinicians working in Youth One-Stop Shop services.

Simon Denny will talk about the unique contribution youth health clinicians bring to services for young people and why we desperately need more trained youth health clinicians!

The creation of co-creation

Here at YES we are passionate about being the only fully inclusive youth focused disability information centre in New Zealand, with all of our services, projects and workshops being co-created, co-designed and co-delivered with young people of different abilities.

With that in mind and sticking true to the process, this presentation has been co-created and will be co-delivered with a young person. Sharing two different perspectives to our co-creation story gives a unique interactive first-hand insight on the ripple effects within our service, the community, wider sectors and on the young people involved. Keeping it transparent we will be sharing all the challenges, learnings and outcomes we have experienced. Our presentation will also include an overview of our projects, a slide show, and an interactive icebreaker. Handouts will include Journey Stones, a unique way to encourage storytelling and refection.

Community insights research: a deep dive to discover what really matters

YWCA Auckland is committed to understanding the challenges facing women, particularly Auckland based young women, so that we can design our services to best meet their needs.

Our presentation will validate the method and benefits of community insights research as both a relevant data gathering method and a way of deep diving with our communities to connect with and understand their needs. The presentation will also provide the ongoing trends and emerging issues that our research
presented.

Using youth development and youth participation approaches we train young women and program volunteers to go into their own communities to conduct the interviews. Further to this we use the "Better by Design" approach to "unpack" each interview to fully understand the underlying stories and themes that emerge. It provides an opportunity for young women to be involved in influencing, shaping, and further developing our services to meet their own community needs through our organisation.

The big picture: Rainbow* young people and wellbeing in Aotearoa

Rainbow young people are incredibly resilient, brave and community minded. Despite this, they remain over-represented in negative wellbeing statistics. We will explore an overview of where we're at now, where we want to get to, and how the youth sector, government and rainbow* community need to work together to enable rainbow* young people to thrive in Aotearoa.

*We are using the term rainbow to describe people who do not identify as heterosexual, do not fit typical gender norms, and/or were born with bodies that do not match common biological definitions of male or female.

Exploring Te Whāriki as a model for positive youth development

Since the YDSA was published, youth development work in Aotearoa has focused on the principles of Positive Youth Development. This has involved using theories and ideas that predominately come from an American context and the work of positive psychology. When indigenous models have been incorporated these have come from Native American contexts (the Circle of Courage) and the field of health and psychology here in Aotearoa New Zealand (Te Whare Tapa Wha) and in the Pacific (eg Folofale). This presentation describes a model of education and child development that has been used in Early Childhood Education, Te Whariki, and shows how it can be used as a strengths-based PYD model.

Spoken Worlds: Spoken word poetry as a tool for youth development

In recent years we have seen the exponential growth of spoken word poetry in popular culture. Young people in particular have connected with this media and have found a platform to share their opinions, voice and stories. In this workshop we will explore how spoken word can be utilised to achieve positive youth development outcomes which act as a catalyst for young people - beginning a self-motivated journey of reflection and expression.

The participants of this programme will witness spoken word poetry performances, be introduced to a spoken word resource for educators which is free and downloadable, hear from young spoken word poets, take part in games and icebreakers, and be given writing prompts to produce their own spoken word poetry.

Supporting youth mental health and wellbeing using online approaches: Current practices and future opportunities

This will be a hands-on workshop where participants will try out and contribute to the development of digital tools for youth mental health and well-being.

1. Participants will be introduced to challenges and evolving directions in digital tools for youth mental health.
2. Participants will engage with SPARX (an online tool for young people with depression) and explore issues around uptake and engagement of this freely available tool.
3. Participants will engage with a working prototype of a Habits Beta app (digital tool to support resilience in young people) from E Tipu e Rea, the Better Start National Science Challenge, and will be invited to consider the direction the project is heading.
4. Participants will be introduced to the design concepts for a digital tool for young people who have engaged in self-harm, and will take part in a real-life co-design 'sprint' to progress the development of a prototype tool.

Unaddressed causes of suicide

Too often we only talk about the link between depression and suicide.

Research into suicide over the past 30 years has shown that there is a wide spectrum of causes that go far beyond just depression.
Some of these causes include, a same day crisis, knowing someone who died by suicide, celebrity suicides, suicides from trauma and psychosis.

This is a must for anyone who works with young people.