The Southland Community Spirit

Posted by Frana Cardno on 13 August 2009 | 0 Comments

Tags: Youth Guarantee, youth offending, John Key, Rodney Hide, Southland spirit, community

I was very pleased to see Prime Minister John Key's announcement about youth initiatives, such as a Youth Guarantee and tough new law and order initiatives to combat youth crime.

Mr Key has said far too many young people are not in education, training, or work - more than 25,000 in fact aged 15 to 19. The Youth Guarantee will provide a universal, no-cost education entitlement for all 16 and 17-year-olds so they can access school-level educational study at approved institutions. The Fresh Start Programmes will be a Youth Court sentence for those on the road to serious offending. The year-long intensive programmes aim to instill discipline and address underlying causes of offending, and will include up to three months training at, for example, an army facility.

This sounds great but I believe it is essential that any courses involving youth are community driven by the people in the youth's communities - people they can look up to and admire, and who can mentor these youth, who have probably not had anyone like that in their lives. I also strongly believe we need to recognise that school/university/polytech is not for every child and apprenticeships and other such programmes need to be considered within the youth guarantee as well.

We are successful here in Southland with our ALIVE programme, which has helped about 80% of the participants into further training or work. There are other programmes like this around the country that are also successful and they should not be forgotten by the Government.

I was delighted to speak to the Winton Probus Club recently and was a bit overwhelmed when I drove up to the Salvation Army Hall and saw the cars out on the street because there were so many people. I enjoy talking to clubs like this, who have such a strong interest in their community and what is happening.

This week started with a visit from Rodney Hide, who was very interested in Council and especially our community board system, which is unique in New Zealand because of the delegations the boards have. Mr Hide said he would like to see a system such as ours in Auckland, but I said that would be difficult because we have so much more community spirit down here in Southland and the people of the south are different as they are prepared to roll up their sleeves and get on with it. Can Aucklanders do this?