Senior students are keen to take up leadership opportunities but they want to be able to be effective, especially when they deal with some challenging behaviours.

We saw that we could, in partnership with schools, offer an experience that better prepared them on how to communicate, encourage, and lead in a mana enhancing way. 

So began the work to create a multi-school leadership camp, to be held over three days in Karangahake gorge. The inaugural camp would involve five students and one teacher from Melville High School, Ngaruawahia High School and Paeroa College, a total of 15 students, supported by 3 teachers. Leadership skills would be taught in an outdoor setting while participating in outdoor activities.

We communicated with the students, teachers, principals and whanau about the camp, what to expect and the information required of them.  We developed a number of resources for the camp including lesson plans, EOTC information, a camp booklet, Covid plan, Sustainability plan, certificate and recipe ideas.  We recruited guest speakers to join the event – Jessie Smith, a BMX racer and an inspirational young leader and Larn Wilkinson Iwi and Maori Liaison Officer, Hauraki District Council to share stories of the place and help create a cultural connection.  We liaised with DOC to ensure our camp was sustainable and organised a guest speaker to discuss conservation on camps with the students.

Unfortunately, the day before camp was supposed to take place we were thrown into lock down and had to cancel.   We still see the value in this experience and are planning to run this camp again in the term three holidays, 2022. Initially our plan is to start with three or four schools and then offer this opportunity to all our kura.