Part of Ao Tawhiti’s special character is to support students' real passions and interests. Sarah Higginson, one of the within-school team, has her own passion and interest in exploring ways in which young people can be empowered to find leadership opportunities and to develop their capacity within the school and community as mentors and role models.

We are committed to developing our own peer support mentoring programme that synthesises our special character, core values and our students’ unique voice. This is integrated with our strand, Transitions, as we help our new students settle into life at Ao Tawhiti. Our leadership programme will also provide awesome opportunities for our students to experience leadership that they can take with them on the next stage of their lifelong learning journey.

Our initial foray into this strand of our achievement goal within the Kāhui Ako was to present leadership styles and concepts, gain student voice and workshop leadership opportunities. Dom Wilson, a Year 12 student who is an advocate in this area, along with Sarah have already started to workshop ideas and set up initial structures of a student council. What was encouraging was the age range that presented ideas and engaged in robust discussion around what this means to them as students of Ao Tawhiti and citizens of our central city community.