 Every year Youth Voice Canterbury hold #Activate - South Island Youth Connect. This is a weekend event that is open to all youth participation groups across the South Island. This year we sent three of our members to this event - they had a great time networking with members from other Youth Councils and attending workshops on ethics, governance and professional image, bi-cultural training and more!   
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 During the first term we held a movie night at the Mayfair where we played Tom and Jerry. This night was for our year 7 and 8 students. We had 54 out of 60 year 7 and 8 students come to the event. We have had very good feedback from the students saying they would like more events like it and parents who were almost in disbelief that the KYC were holding an event for their kids for free.
Overall it was an awesome night, and we are glad to believe that we accomplished our goal of uplifting young people's wellbeing! On the 20th March, one of our youth members attended a Youth Audit Team Leader training in Christchurch. Throughout the course we explored what makes a space youth friendly and accessible. Youth Voice Canterbury and the Revision Project will support Kaikōura Youth Council to audit spaces locally. The process involves a team of young people who are both regular and irregular users of a space (eg the Library) following a set audit at two different times (ie Monday after school and Saturday morning) to gauge the differences at those times, then holding a youth forum about the space. The team’s results are collated and a report is produced outlining the results and making recommendations that can make the space more youth friendly. An audit is quite time consuming and is paid for by the organisation requesting the audit. This was an awesome opportunity for our member and will hopefully be of huge benefit to the community and the youth who use spaces in our town! We had Viane Makalio come to run a facilitation and engagement workshop with youth in Kaikōura. This was an awesome full day workshop. We covered some basic theory, and spent lots of time playing games and learning practical facilitation skills! This was well worth the time to attend, and we can't wait for the next time we get Viane and his crew back in Kaikōura!
This was a gorgeous day downtown! We had members running a free face painting stall at the festival - panda bears and rainbows were our most popular choices!  Four of our members recently spent three full on days in Christchurch at New Zealand Model Parliament, hosted by UN Youth. This national event for secondary school students focused on New Zealand's parliamentary system. Attendees experienced the process of a bill becoming legislation through the House of Representatives by taking on the role of a Member of Parliament and debating interesting, pressing and relevant issues. Working in Select Committees, they learnt about specific areas of NZ politics (eg Maori affairs, Environment, Justice) and applied this knowledge to a mock bill, debating whether or not to codify and entrench New Zealand's constitution. All four youth came away with a far greater understanding of politics in NZ and a desire to take part in more events like this. The opportunity to think big, debate, hone public speaking skills and hang out with other like-minded youth was amazing! Owen Thornton represented as a Labour MP for Christchurch East, in the Justice Select Committee. Rocco Cullen represented as a Labour MP for the Hauraki-Waikato electorate, in the Environment Select Committee. Noah Bentley represented as a National MP for the East Coast electorate, in the Maori Affairs Select Committee. Petra Jellyman represented as a National MP for the Northland electorate, in the Maori Affairs Select Committee.
We had an awesome day out at the Christchurch Youth Council's Amazing Race event on 4th August. We entered two teams; Flameingo and Rainbow Delta Squad. The race encompassed a series of challenges at mandatory stops, photo challenges and micro questions. There was a great mix of activities ranging from consultation and educational through to physical challenges, observation and creativity. Our thanks go out to CYC for organising this fantastic event. We really enjoyed catching up with other youth and leaders we knew and getting ideas for our own events in the future. Our AGM was held at Kaikōura District Council Chambers on Tuesday 23 July.
12 members attended and unanimously elected Owen Thornton and Petra Jellyman as Co-Chairs for the year. We were very grateful to Theo Rae for agreeing to continue in the role of Secretary. We talked about Aspiring Chairs and agreed that we will mentor and support Solomon Bentley, Theo Rae and Jade Cullen to gain skills and develop confidence to aspire to become Chairs in the future. Our annual accounts were adopted and approved for uploading to the Societies register. We reviewed our workplan that we set in February and are on track with all of our planned events and initiatives for the year! KYC attended a Top of the South Forum on 12th July with Marlborough and Nelson Youth Councils. There is real value for us to meet with other YCs - we make connections with like-minded people, we learn how other organisations function and we get new ideas for initiatives and events we can be involved in. KYC is quite different from other YCs - we have a younger member base (we accept any students from our High School and up to 24 year olds; this means we have year 7/8 students which other YCs don't). We accept new members throughout the year and we are really inclusive - if you want to join just come on in - we don't use an application process to pick who is going to be part of our group. We are also an independent group from our District Council - we are an Incorporated Society with our own deed etc. We aren't a council committee. So there are lots of points of difference in the make up of our group. Another big point of difference is that we meet weekly - we have so much going on and want to keep on top of it (and it's fun!) that we meet every Tuesday during term time. We also run our own events as well as inputting to District Council, making submission on topical issues and attending training where possible. We do a bit of everything - in big centres there are more groups doing more for and with youth - in our wee town we are involved across a broad spectrum. At the forum we had an awesome presentation around Wellbeing and Mindfulness - something that we are all interested in and keen to learn more about.  |
