Ngā Rangatahi Toa

Ngā Rangatahi Toa provides creative arts’ mentoring to help to transition rangatahi (young people) from alternative education or no form of schooling, back into mainstream secondary or tertiary education, or employment.

Through their core and outreach programs they connect around 20-30 rangatahi each year with New Zealand artists and performers, who work with them to explore their potential using music, theatre, spoken word, photography and other creative endeavours. Their term time courses and one-off community cultural development projects engage through love, kindness, compassion and mindfulness, and empower rangatahi with a deeper understanding of themselves and the society they live in.

Ngā Rangatahi Toa aims to ensure that Aotearoa is a country in which every young person fulfils their potential no matter their circumstances. Their vision is to develop a world class pedagogical and community cultural development framework that is seen as the ideal model for engaging marginalised youth. Their target population is young people between the ages of 14-19 who are in alternative education or YNEET, who live in South Auckland. They work with young people and their whānau in high engagement programmes and arts access programmes.

For one year (2015-16) Rei Foundation provided support for one Ngā Rangatahi Toa youth mentor, and three scholarships for rangatahi alumni. The youth mentor works with the rangatahi on their transitions, makes home visits and provides networking support for rangatahi and their whānau with the wider community. The youth mentor role was crucial to Ngā Rangatahi Toa’s engagement strategy and grew out of a need to provide relevant and expert guidance to the rangatahi they work with. The youth mentor also acts as a conduit between Ngā Rangatahi Toa, alternative education providers and other external stakeholders.

The youth mentor leads everything from recruitment to engagement to participation to transition. Supported by the Director of Engagement (who leads the whānau engagement) and working alongside the youth counsellor, the youth mentor walks with rangatahi as they immerse themselves in Ngā Rangatahi Toa’s creative arts programmes and classroom based work, and also co-designs and facilitates tertiary transition plans with each of the rangatahi. The youth mentor, Director of Engagement and Ngā Rangatahi Toa counsellor form the necessary wrap around support for each of our high engagement rangatahi.

Rei Foundation also provided three scholarships for students in the 2015-16 year. A travel scholarship allowed one student to travel to Japan to sing waiata on a cultural school trip. The other two were education scholarships to help transition rangatahi into to tertiary study and mainstream high school.

Through these scholarships, Ngā Rangatahi Toa and Rei Foundation aimed to support the recipients, who had transitioned successfully into mainstream school or tertiary study, to go on to further opportunities with their schools or tertiary providers.