Young leaders helping the community

MEDIA RELEASE

YWCA of Wellington Hutt Valley

Wednesday 7 October 2009

Young leaders helping the community

Over the last month and a half, young Wellington leaders have been working hard to raise money and awareness towards two deserving charities.

Wellington East Girl’s College pupils worked in two teams to create an advocacy project that would benefit their community and make a difference to people’s lives.

The Discover™ programme aims to develop participant’s leadership style, and to provide opportunities to put it into practice with challenges involving social and community responsibility. The programme works with young women aged 16-18 over an 18-month period, during which participants become involved with one-on-one mentoring by older women. These mentors support and encourage mentees to embrace new projects, work within the community and achieve their goals.

Team Leader Rebecca Bishop, Year 13, and her team held sausage sizzles and raffle draws to raise money for Miramar Primary South School’s reading programme. The school has a low decile and a high proportion of students whose second language is English. To aid these pupils the school needs specialised literacy resources. Rebecca and her team have so far managed to raise $800. This money enables the school to buy 80 new books.

Manisha Prakash, Year 13, and her team have raised over $100 towards their charity ‘Positive Women’, an organisation that promotes community education of HIV and AIDS, and provides support for women affected by the disease. Manisha and her team are also counting the money raised from their school bake sale and raffle collection.

Discover™ Programme Manager, Lili Schmidt-Uili says, “The mentees have achieved a noble task by serving their community and making a difference to people’s lives. They have had to balance their school and extracurricular commitments, as well as develop and complete the project. To do this within the time frame is an admirable achievement.”

The YWCA of Wellington and Hutt Valley was founded in 1906, and today works to develop women’s leadership potential, and support them in making positive life choices. The Discover™ program started in 2008, with Wellington East Girls College first to benefit from the programme.

The YWCA is the largest women’s organisation in the world incorporating over 110 countries and uniting more than 25 million women. The vision of the World YWCA is to empower young women through leadership. www.wgtnywca.org.nz

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