Earlier in the year, new student Lennox Crowe took an unusual trip. The year 12, who has recently transferred to Nayland College from Marlborough Boys College, spent the day in Wellington, meeting with representatives from various government ministries as part of his new Aotearoa Youth Coalition project.

Aotearoa Youth Coalition (AYC) is a brand new nationwide youth organization, with the purpose of “collecting, developing and amplifying youth voice to national government.”

The non-partisan organization, which Lennox founded over the summer holidays, has selected a diverse group of 16 individuals nationwide to present their findings to central government. The group presents their findings on a yearly basis, and will invite submissions from any young people, from primary school age right through to university students.

The purpose of his trip to Wellington was for Lennox to meet with representatives from different ministries that could help the AYC. He found that they were receptive to what the AYC was hoping to achieve.

"I was meeting with people within the Ministry of Social Development, the Ministry of Education, and a few organisations like Inspiring Stories and Voice which is separate from the government. I was also talking to the Ministry of Youth development about how they would be able to support us with what they do and they are really on-board with everything."

Lennox said he founded AYC when he found no such group existed already.

"It seems pretty straight forward to want a group that advocates for whatever youth want," he said. "But when I did a bit of research, and a bit of looking around, with my own issues and ideas that I wanted to see taken forward to the government, I realised there wasn’t actually anything out there to do that already – which kind of surprised me so I decided I might as well set something up."

However, he was keen to note that the AYC will not work with Parliament, as they felt that to represent youth voice, they needed to be a non-partisan movement. 

"We are not aligned to any political party. While we do have contacts at the parliamentary service, and we are talking about youth engagement with parliament, we are not tied to any political party."

It was Lennox's own engagement in climate change issues that initially caused him to dip his toes into youth advocacy a bit further, leading to him forming the AYC.

"I’ve been really passionate about advocating for climate justice. I was an organiser for the national school strike against climate change and I have attended a Green Peace protest up in Taranaki. The AYC was originally just going to be advocating around climate change and it was going to have close ties to the Climate Change Commission. But we then decided that if we were going to have a group, it would be a bit of waste to just limit our discussions to climate change -  so we decided to broaden it out a bit."

 Lennox felt that with an increasing amount of youth showing an interest in politics, the time was right for an organisation such as the AYC. 

"Across the country you can see lots of younger councilors, and lots of younger people who are standing for political parties. I think the time is right to get much more youth engagement in politics because there is obviously an interest for it out there."

The surprising thing is that for all his obvious leadership ability, Lennox has no aspirations of going into politics himself.

"I think more can be achieved in the private sector than by sitting in parliament. But the AYC will at least be a good way to get youth opinions  heard in parliament," he said.

Lennox urged those interested in the group, to check out AYC’s social media sites (see below) to meet the new representatives.

"The best way for people in Nelson to get involved is to put forward ideas and opinions," Crowe said. He wants the coalition to work towards seeing that local ideas reach people within the right ministries up in Wellington.

Check out AYC online:

Instagram: @aotearoa_youth_coalition

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aotearoa.youth.coalition/