Town leaders gather to plan Jobs for Youth

August 9th, 2013
[by David Armstrong]

Some of the business, education and community leaders who are ready to guide Motueka into the future met last night to begin formulating ways of keeping our young people here through innovative employment ideas.

The group of more than 20 people, who are likely to be among the town's next leadership cohort, are getting behind efforts to translate the successes of Waikato's Otorohanga District Council's youth employment solutions into similar Motueka projects.

A core number of the group, co-ordinated by youth counsellor Carl Chapman, will meet again to define the youth unemployment problem, set goals, and plan practical steps to begin an employment turnaround by taking advantage of often existing support networks.

A series of seminars were held in Motueka four weeks ago by the no-nonsense chairman of the Mayoral Taskforce for Jobs, Dale Williams, explaining how Otorohanga slashed its entrenched youth unemployment and crime problems through local initiatives over the past eight years. (See our story and the text of his speech here.)

About 30 of the Motueka people attending those seminars expressed interest in developing similar initiatives here, and some of them are now talking about taking the first steps.

Last night a good cross-section representing several progressive businesses, education providers, community groups and youth themselves met again to survey the local employment scene and to plan the next steps in keeping Motueka youth engaged in the workforce here. (Your reporter was pleased to note that he was the oldest person attending.)

People agreed a good aim would be to "change the perception of Motueka so it is seen as a place that you don't have to leave to get a job", and that Motueka could eventually advertise itself as "a place to work, live and play".

Reg Dysart provided a great example of how his firm, Flash Electrical, has only long-term Motuekans on its staff and has trained most of them through from raw youth via apprenticeships to be top-quality electrical tradespeople. He said, however, that the community then needs to support local businesses who do this by providing them with work.

Top 10 Holiday Park owner Steve Edwards also spoke about how employment initiatives and a local jobs taskforce should be seen as an investment in the future of the town and of individual, forward-looking businesses, rather than as an unnecessary expense.

Discussions so far are at the talking stage, with clear goals not yet established. The main aim will be something along the lines of attaining full employment for youth, and there are likely to be several projects within that goal, starting with gathering hard facts and statistics about the (un)employment scene.

Borrowing from the Otorohanga model, some projects which could work well in Motueka include a local trade expo by young employees pitched to high school students, a paid "camp mother" mentoring position to help both young school leavers and business owners, and further work to get NMIT trades courses running in Motueka as well as those already offered in Nelson.

The as-yet unnamed leadership group will look at ways of funding Carl as its paid part-time co-ordinator and establishing an executive planning group. Some funds are left over from Carl's previous contract with Te Awhina Marae. Other seed money may be available from the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) and the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs.

The group will meet again at the Top 10 Holiday Park conference room on Thursday September 5th at 7pm. Anyone interested in joining in the conversation may contact Carl at .

The jobs initiative began by accident after Te Awhina Marae gained an MSD contract to investigate anti-bullying campaigns and hired Carl to run the contract. As part of his work he met Otorohanga Mayor Dale Williams and was inspired by his achievements there.

After the anti-bullying project finished there was a little MSD money left over so while Carl remained in town he began looking at the local problem of disengaged youth, and this led to asking Dale to return and tell how Otorohanga had managed to address this global problem.

Comment by Maihi Barber:
[Posted 12 August 2013]

Nice work Carl ... nice beginning.

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