Notice Board - News

YouthBank grows culture of giving

YouthBank, National

In early 2002 Peter Wyatt, as chair of the New Zeal Foundation, undertook a study tour in Canada. One of the findings was that we in New Zealand needed to 'grow' our 'culture of giving', commencing with an emphasis on this within the education system. The subsequent outcome was the concept of a 'YouthBank', and this was in 2003 initiated in seven colleges of the Western Bay of Plenty, grew to eight in the following year, and in 2006 has been expanded to include the four colleges of the Eastern Bay of Plenty. YouthBank, now a registered trademark of New Zeal Foundation, is aimed at maintaining and growing the culture of giving of both money and time within our communities, by involving young people while they are at college.

The 2003 Pilot programme was made possible by the generosity of the Tindall and Perry Foundations and each of the colleges received $2,000 for senior students to allocate to community and school related projects.

2005 saw ZESPRI International Limited become the programme funder, with New Zeal continuing to coordinate and mentor the project. It is ZESPRI's generous commitment which has made possible the widening understanding that YouthBank provides an opportunity for learning, reward, appreciation and awareness of the needs of our community. 2005 was a hugely successful year with Bernice Mene being the motivational speaker at the distribution evening in August, to which the participating colleges invited successful recipient organisations to attend, and when the students from each college gave out the cheques to the organisations they had selected. Following the expansion now underway for 2006, we hope to further extend the scheme on an annual basis.

The following processes are undertaken by the senior students of each college between February and July, with a distribution event being held in August.

• Establishing guidelines for these projects. All project recipients must qualify as a charitable purpose under IRD rules. Within these rules each college can devise their own criteria for calling for applications — our stipulations are that the recipients must be youth-related and no one recipient is to receive more than $500. Therefore the students need to consider where to look for these organisations, which youth-related projects they like, and how much they would like to give to each.
• Calling for applications — no money is allocated for advertising so each college must determine how they will let their communities know this funding is available? Solutions have included word of mouth, free or sponsored advertising, letters of invitation to apply, etc.
• Assess the resulting applications according to pre-determined guidelines which the students have established; mentoring assistance is available from New Zeal to the college staff coordinators and / or students in arriving at these criteria.
• Short list the projects and undertake visits to these organisations before making their final decisions.
• The final stage is an audit process to be completed by early October (before school exams) from the students. For each organisation funded the contents of the audit report encompass:
  • Have the funds been used for the defined purpose?
  • What outcomes resulted?
  • What the experience has been for the students?
  • The supervising teachers comments.

The indications over the past three years are that YouthBank is an exciting initiative for the students which enables them to gain knowledge of how the community sector works, what the needs of their community and its peoples are, and how they can make a contribution.

Further information can be obtained from Peter Wyatt, Chair, New Zeal Foundation at PO Box220, Tauranga 07 5713718.

Reproduced, with our thanks, from the ANGOA newsletter.