Youth Mentoring Services

The Trust provides youth mentoring services to young people and is currently working in eighteen schools in Hawkes Bay. Youth mentors facilitate school based group activities such as creative dance, Maori visual arts, creative arts, kapa haka, vegetable gardening and music. They help create a sense of community where pupils can share their views and be respectfully listened to for what they aspire to and believe within themselves. Positive activities are supported through contacts with local iwi, whanau, resource teachers and community groups, all of whom accept active listening, dialogue and cooperative learning enables healing and personal growth to happen. It is when mutual understanding happens that self-esteem is nurtured and young people are able to become resilient enough to develop leadership skills. 

Cultural Awareness 

Activities available through our cultural services are regional wananga, kapa haka, creative dance and marae visits. In wananga we encourage waiata, warm up stretches, cool down stretches and stillness. At the beginning of a wananga session we agree on what ground rules can help everyone safely move forward. We make homely spaces for participants to ask questions and share what they already know. Development of oneself as part of the group, previous cultural experiences and responses to new challenges are acknowledged and supported. 

Praxis Training April 16th to 18th 2012

Praxis is a network of practitioners in youth and community work. Lloyd Martin will be the facilitator for a three day group learning experience that  provides strength based strategies for those working with challenging children and youth. For over 20 years, Lloyd and Anthea have shared their home in Porirua, Wellington with local young people and worked in their community as practitioners in outdoor education. Lloyd has written several books around youth work. He holds degrees in anthropology and education. If you are involved with  mentoring families, groups of school children or youth in the community, this is the opportunity for you to train with other mentors facing similar issues and concerns to yourself.

The charge for registration is $20. The venue in Hawkes Bay is to be announced. To register for this group learning experience where you can develop   abilities to disengage from adversarial encounters,  connect with adult-wary youngsters, restore bonds of respect and create climates where young    people can flourish, contact Roger by phone on 06 8706448 or by email at info@sharingthecaring.org.nz

Action Research 

LISTENING TO VOICES  IN 4 HAWKES BAY SCHOOLS - Transformative Values in Cultural Context

written by Roger McNeill & Kerry Kitione

This book shows how four schools in different exciting ways developed caring connected communities,

avoided exclusions and ensured everyone was treated with respectful compassion.

Cost is $25 plus GST - all proceeds go to youth mentoring services in schools

Email info@sharingthecaring.org.nz for an invoice or send your cheque to Te Whakaritorito Trust, PO Box 264, Hastings

 Kapai Te Kai - Vegetable Gardening 

The Trust develops ways in which children can learn vegetable and organic gardening in schools and at home. This project known by the name Kapai Te Kai. (Good Food), shows students how to recognise the difference between plants and weeds, care for the soil with compost and recycle scraps to feed a worm farm in order to be more self sustainable in their lifestyle. By doing just a little bit vegetable gardening each day students can keep fit and save on gym fees! The Trust has two gardening mentors currently working in four schools, Poukawa, Pukehou, Kimiora and TKKM O Te Wananga Whare Tapere O Takitimu. They facilitate organic gardening projects that provide children with enough well-being and exhiliration to share their stories with parents and friends who in turn feel self-motivated to learn how to garden as well. This enables the chidlren to grow a sense of whanau hauora. On 25th November 2011, TKKM O Te Wananga Whare Tapere O Takitimu were presented by Mother Earth NZ with an enviroschools award. The school had been holding free soup days every week where children and parents could try out new veges and get better connected to a wider range of food. The school aims to spread out into the community by holding gardening lesssons and sharing seeds.