Young People Producing Careers & Identities - NZCER - Vaughan, Roberts, Gardiner, Wellington 2006

This is the first major report from the Pathways and Prospects Research Study about path-way and career-related experiences and perspectives of young people after leaving school. It investigates how young people make decisions about their careers and working life, including any part that "indecision" and "change of heart" might play in that. The investigation raises some issues about the framework used in thinking about how to support young people in transition.

Dowload report (1.6Mb pdf)

Looking Back Over The Past Two Decades

He moana pukepuke e ekengia e te waka - A choppy sea can be navigated

MENTOR is a word that is very readily understood because it represents an idea that is both ancient and universal. In the past, mentoring tended to occur informally as a natural consequence of the elder/younger knowledge transfer within families, local communities, schools, apprenticeships and other training systems. Its modern use arose first in business, STRUCTURED YOUTH MENTORING was an innovation of the 80s that first came to us via Australia and the Rotary-sponsored PEER SUPPORT programme.

It is a great credit to all parties, together with the robustness of this Tuakana/Teina concept and the importance that is rightly placed on the need to support young people in the "troubled transition" to secondary school, that this SCHOOL-RUN programme is still in almost universal operation in our secondary schools and practised with exceptional merit in many locations.

The next big innovation arose in the South Island, where the first COMMUNITY-RUN programmes began and where the pioneering group of YMAANZ organised the first Winston Churchill Fellowship, so that first-hand experience of international work in mentoring could be shared in NZ, followed by the first chance to network at national conferences in Dunedin (2000) and Blenheim (2001).

The Auckland area has always had the advantage of economies of scale and several local initiatives such as Big Buddy and TYLA developed in the mid 90s, while the Ministry of Education provided foundation support for the development of the Maori mentoring programme He Ara Tika.

The NZ Business Council for Sustainable Development performed a really valuable role in drawing ideas together in their June 2001 publication "Successful Business and School Partnerships" which showcased various cutting-edge initiatives of the time. Since then the universal need for a strong support infrastructure and paid staff to manage this, as well as to oversee the evaluation work necessary to gain funding has meant that growth has tended towards SCHOOL-BASED programmes where, as foreseen by NZBCSD, the school is the site of a co-operative partnership with mentoring providers. Tertiary providers are now also a very active presence in the post-secondary transition.

MENTORING IN CONJUNCTION WITH ANOTHER KEY ACTIVITY was pioneered by PROJECT K. Other successful early models of this type include FIRST FOUNDATION - Mentoring with work experience and MATES - Mentoring with tutoring, while AFFIRMING WORKS of Manukau City offer a really strong model that capitalises on the exceptional community connectedness of young Pasifika leaders. Mentors generally work on a voluntary basis, but some programmes, particularly those using mentors from the tertiary sector, now make modest tutoring payments to students whose mentoring work limits paid employment.

The City of Manukau Educational Trust (COMET) was quick to realise their social responsibility towards NZ's largest youth population and sponsored this country's first mentoring manual (COMET 2002) from which the opening whakatauki is quoted. There are now a wide range of robust and structured models operating in NZ, including local adaptations of famous US mentoring programmes - I HAVE A DREAM (Mt Roskill) and Nelson-based BIG BROTHERS, BIG SISTERS NZ while important and clear strategic work has been offered since 2003 by the Ministry of Youth Development.

Our country is fortunate that so many adults seek selflessly to work in this vital cause of service to our young people and do so with such mutual goodwill, working together to address both "The intrepid leap envisaged in mentoring and the stubborn obstacles to success" (Pawson 2004).

Source: Ann Dunphy 2006

Youth Mentoring leaders share their visions

June 17 2007

Radio New Zealand National's Chris Laidlaw spoke with youth mentoring leaders Graeme Dingle (Foundation for Youth Development/Project K), Lesley Tobin (Dusseldorp Skills Forum, NSW), Jacinta Krefft (Challenge for Change, Wellington), and Wellington based Lauire O'Reilly who works with young people with gang links.

To hear their interview, click here Ideas for 17 June (Duration 44:14)