Youth Development Organisations find their MOJO

Youth Development Organisations find their MOJO

INVOLVE 2018: Positive Youth Development in Aotearoa

Ara Taiohi, peak body for youth development, in partnership with the New Zealand Youth Mentoring Network, The Collaborative Trust for Research and Training in Youth Health and Development, and the Society for Youth Health Professionals of Aotearoa New Zealand are excited to formally announce the beginning of a collaboration that will culminate in Involve 2018. Involve 2018 is an opportunity for people who work with young people to gather together to enhance skills and strengthen connections to promote positive youth development and wider sector development.

These four organisations are formally launching a MOJO (Memorandum of Joint Operations) at a sector leadership event as part of #YouthWeekNZ because Involve 2018 is a conference that will bring together a wide variety of people from across the youth sector including: youth development providers, health services, mentors, government, practitioners, clinicians, researchers, evaluators, policy-makers, educators, medical doctors, youth workers, social workers, young people and more. Involve aims to inspire, inform encourage and challenge these people in their work with young people.

Involve provides an important opportunity to grow the capacity of the youth sector to support young people in New Zealand to develop into thriving, active, connected members of our democracy, our community and our economy.

Involve 2018 will explore Positive Youth Development in Aotearoa in 2018.

The event will be anchored by the whakatauki: Me hoki whakamuri, kia ahu whakamua, kaneke: In order to improve, evolve, and move forward, we must reflect back to what has been.

The four organisations collaborating to make Involve happen are deeply grounded in youth development in Aotearoa. It is our collective intention through the conference to provide people working with young people with:

· the opportunity to connect with others in the youth sector

· the chance to hear from leading researchers, policy-makers and grassroots practitioners

· the chance to hear from leading international experts and

· an opportunity to share their experiences in working with young people; or present new research and information.

Involve 2018 will consist of four streams of programming that provide rich learning opportunities for all people who work with young people. The overarching exploration of positive youth development in Aotearoa in 2018 will be supported by specialist learning focusing on health and wellbeing, mentoring and education, research and evaluation. Involve 2018 will enable people working with young people to connect their work to the work of others’, to inspire each other and be inspired, to be informed, challenged and invigorated by high quality professional development.

This innovative collaboration between four sector based organizations will enhance and empower the expertise each holds to be spread across even more people who work with young people. A better connected sector will ensure better developmental opportunities and outcomes for all young people in Aotearoa. “Young people are stronger if they are connected to each other, their family and whanau, and their community; young people are better supported if the sector is more connected; young people’s needs are better met if the sector and young people are connected to the big picture.” Dame Tariana Turia, opening the last Involve Conference which was held in Auckland 2010.

Conference Objectives

• connect the diverse range of people who work with young people

• provide training and skill development opportunities to participants

• encourage best practice through the sharing of evidence based research and practice

ENDS

© Scoop Media