Advice on working with youth

Hi all,

I have been talking with City Mission about working with them as an organisation. One option is to figure out a way to work with their Mission for Youth school which is a school of young people who have been expelled from mainstream schools. I think it would be a wonderful way for them to get connected into the community and potentially get some work experience before leaving school.

The director of the school is hesitant about the kids going into peoples homes so we need to come up with a more organised and directed programme that is going to benefit the kids.

Ideas I've had so far have been:
- Timebank work experience - the kids brainstorm what jobs they would like when they leave school and I try and match them up with timebank members who work in that field.
- Link their activities within the timebank to NCEA credits
- Earn credits by working in the community gardens which they can use on getting something done at their school or learning something new.

I would love to hear any ideas that you have about how the timebank and this school could have a reciprocal relationship. Plus ways that the kids might want to engage with the timebank in a positive way.

Thanks!
Hannah

Do you have timebank members who have businesses or fences that get hit with graffiti? Maybe the Youth School kids could do graffiti clean up and decorating areas that get hit often, as a graffiti deterrent.

Am trying to engage Reo speaking students from our local college to read our TB newsletter on the local radio station, in a large area like Wgtn this could be in Samoan through to Somalian.
Further to your thinking on work exp for some of the non acedemic kids. Our state houses are about an age where windows need maintenance (hinge replacement, new stay), there are always minor repairs/maintenance that could be done on anything from guttering, roofs, door handles, doors, whole in wall repairs etc. We are engaging with the college to find a way forward to share our skills experience with the kids to re-engage them into education (be it outside the classroom). I am hoping it will come from a postion of reward for effort and support (on behalf of the child) not a teacher opting to get rid of the most disruptive child in the class. Trust from receivers is still being worked through.

I'd play to their skills and interests, then just find businesses and organisations that require those skills. Hell get some of the kids on loomio and they can decide what kind of things they'd like to help with?

If they can then get NCEA credits (through school or local tech institutes) from whatever the projects are then that's even better.

Offer to teach every one of these kids to program using fun systems like Scratch and PyGames, then pay them in time credits to contribute to open source software communities like Loomio. They can earn NCEA credits for Digital Technology, and contribute helpfully to real world projects:
http://scratch.mit.edu/
http://www.pygame.org/