YMCA Wellington has been busy moving into our new premises in Community House on Willis Street slap bang in the centre of town. We waved goodbye to the Head Tutor, Whiti, and gave a big hello to our new Tutor, Stephen Parker, and new Youth Worker, Cat Duval, who have joined our longstanding Tutor, Lisa Philips, to form the new ‘Team YMCA Wellington’! aka YMCAwesome! They’ve been busy setting up the premises and are enrolling over 40 students onto this years ‘Got to Get a Job’ Youth and Tops courses. Since the beginning of the year, Lisa and Steve have led the way coaching students through their level 1 and 2 units, providing individual support and guidance as well as group motivation to the students to complete their own personal achievement plans. Meanwhile Cat has been building networks and developing a referral system to respond to the specific needs of our young people. She has also been developing new opportunities for the students to develop their skills, confidence and identity through arts, music, sports and vocational activities. We aim for these activities to contribute to achieving the curriculum units as well as globally recognized awards like the Duke of Edinburgh and their prestigious Hilary Award.
Thanks to a new partnership with Vincent’s Art Studio, every week the students can now explore a fully equipped art space where qualified art tutors coach our young people on everything from woodwork to ceramics stenciling to painting. The first project is called ‘The Wall’ which is about empowering the students to take responsibility and lay the foundations for their future. This project focuses on ownership and identity with the students working together to design the wall, paint the background and then independently creating their own bricks and building a collective wall collage, with space for new students to add to it later on. The final piece will take pride of place on a central wall in the New Wellington YMCA. This is the first stage of a partnership with Vincent’s that we hope will become long term.
A new music project is in development with Zeal which aims to have the students produce their own EP by the end of the year. The students have been planning what kind of message and genre they want to produce. The project launches with a visit of the recording studio’s this Thursday and our Youth Worker will be working behind the scenes with Zeal and the NZ School of Rock to bring in the tutors and structure the programme.
Renewing our relationship within the Wellington Youth Network has enabled the Wellington YMCA to connect with Wellington’s thriving youth services and aims to enable our young people to get involved in some exciting projects around the Wellington area this year. Thanks to long-term partnerships with the YMCA’s in Kiatoke and Upper Hutt we will be doing some kayaking and horse riding on top of the regular basketball and soccer playing.
Other positive outcomes include successfully housing for some of our high risk young men, setting up benefits for independent youth through WINZ, referring our young people to appropriate support groups, services and events to support them in their lives. Students are successfully applying for courses at Welltech in Catering and Carpentry, as well successfully maintaining jobs in the Wellington area in construction and across the service industry. Students are keen to sign up to the free Bar Work course that the PBRS are offering our students, coming up next week. They have recently completed Anger Management training and have some training on sexual health coming up. These opportunities will enable the Education Programme to succeed in supporting our students into further employment and training as well as building their life skills and confidence as independent adults.