During Youth Week 2023, we held a Leadership workshop for our students in Auckland and Christchurch.

In Term 2, we celebrated Youth Week immediately after NZSL Week by hosting a leadership workshop in Auckland and Christchurch for selected senior students in Years 11+, with about 12 students joining each workshop.

The theme of 2023's Youth Week was "Leaders of Tomorrow? Leaders of Today!" the workshop was an opportunity for the students to unpack leadership theories and understand effective communication features by putting them into practice through a series of activities. At the start of the workshop, we asked what three things they wanted to work on for themselves and reflected on this at the end of the day.

Through these activities, which also had links to the Health & PE curriculum, the students had to solve problems and have effective teamwork, communication, and leadership to complete the activities. Some activities included Memory, Back-to-Back drawing, navigating a minefield, and building a strong bridge.

It was wonderful to see them all get into it and push themselves. Afterwards, provision staff shared that some students have put their learnings into practice back at the provisions.

At the end of the workshop, we asked them to reflect on the day and share about a leader they admire and why.

Thanks to a grant from Ara Taiohi, we were able to provide these workshops. We also appreciated the Deaf Clubs in Christchurch and Auckland for being able to use their venues, which are valuable Deaf spaces. We intend to continue providing these types of workshops in the future.