New Zealand Celsias

This is a TelstraClear project

Our aim: All young people need a positive, safe and loving environment to grow up in. At TelstraClear, one of our core social aims is to help create a positive environment for New Zealand’s children and youth, who are our nation’s future. Following on from The Big Walk, TelstraClear and FYD convened Youth 2010: The Big Download to try and understand the issues facing our youth, and identify what young people themselves say they need to be positive and successful in their lives.

Our community partner: Foundation for Youth Development (FYD).

Our actions: TelstraClear and FYD invited business leaders, politicians, social service sector representatives and youth experts to attend Youth 2010: The Big Download on 2 February 2010.

The forum was professionally project managed, funded and facilitated by TelstraClear, with support and assistance from external advisors, including Dr Peter Cammock of Canterbury University, and Betsy Haley.

On the day, around 60 young people aged between 16-21 years old joined Hon Paula Bennett and TelstraClear CEO Allan Freeth to host the forum, held at Parliament. All of the youth had taken part in The Big Walk across New Zealand. They joined the business sector CEOs, community leaders and government agency representatives for the first half of the day-long forum. The afternoon session involved the CEOs and other attendees in an activity to discover the critical paths to successful youth programme development, aiming to identify some of the strategic elements that will be instrumental in changing the direction of youth development in New Zealand.

Our footprint: On June 1, 2010 TelstraClear and FYD presented the report titled “Brighter Futures” to Hon Paula Bennett, at a special function convened at OurSpace in Te Papa. A copy of the report is available for viewing or download at:
www.ebookonline.co.nz/telstraclear/brighter_fut....

The Brighter Futures report calls on the Government to help develop large-scale, cross-sector initiatives that provide help, support and confidence to Kiwi teenagers and specifically:
• A government-led nationwide strategy that sees the youth sector, local and national government agencies, NGOs and business leaders working together to create a positive environment for Kiwi teenagers
• A stocktake of existing youth development programmes to identify what is working, how and why. Successful programmes can then be expanded.
• Large-scale cross-sector initiatives that target families in need of additional support by providing holistic prevention and early intervention
• A flexible education system that listens and engages with young people and provides more adventure-based or experiential learning programmes
• More corporate-sector support - mentoring, networking, financial contributions or best-practice business processes - of successful youth initiatives
• More positive profiling of young Kiwis in the media
• To see more business leaders support our aim of creating a brighter future for all New Zealanders.

Our next steps: Following the Brighter Futures report release, we are continuing to work with the youth development sector, in an advisory and enablement role around key initiatives moving forward.

Our corporate citizenship contact: For more info, contact Nicola Libeau, Corporate Citizenship Manager via citizenship@telstraclear.co.nz.