At the very top of the North Island, Kaitaia can feel like the last stop before the end of the earth. It’s isolated, remote, and small - everybody knows your name.
More than 100 people were at this year's Northland Youth Summit. Photo: Sarah Marshall Photography
Ten minutes down the road, kids ride their horses bare-back to the beach, a line of dogs trailing behind. The schools here are either a decile one or two. Young people in Kaitaia aren’t really involved with arts, culture, and big ideas. But they want to be.
Some of them have come to the Northland Youth Summit just to experience exactly that.
The summit is a two day youth-led and youth-driven event that brings together over 100 people aged 12 to 24 from throughout the region. Whangarei, Kaikohe, Tikipunga, Ngunguru, Kawakawa, are all represented here.
Everyone comes with the same goal: to make their communities better.
Poor families, abuse, heavy drinking leading to punch-ups and dangerous driving, teen pregnancies, suicide – were all issues brought to the group discussion on day one; the consensus was the same, everyone here hates that these problems are real for their friends and families.
Ebony Peeni, 16, comes from Ngunguru, a small coastal community near Whangarei. She’s helped to run initiatives before in her community, feeding toasted sandwiches to 200 kids three times a week at her old high school. She’s also in the small group of teenagers who help run the summit.
“I’m so passionate about raising awareness of these issues … I think that’s exactly why we’re having this Summit, to say ‘kids are putting in the work and this is what we’re going to do. It’s not an adult set this up, it’s all based around youth and youth voice.”
Another young Maori student, Ezekiel Raui, 16, has made the trip from Waikato to be a part of the summit. He’s done a lot of time in the youth work sector already, working with Maori TV and in the peer support group Key to Life. He believes in the young people around him and says they’re the ones who are best placed to change things.
Ezekiel Raui Photo: Sarah Marshall Photography
“Our communities are scattered a lot, and it’s not that often that we get to all come together from different areas like Kaitaia, Kawakawa, Kerikeri. Everyone has their different perspectives and coming from different areas, we see different things. Being able to correlate it together, bring it together, and corroborate our ideas is an awesome thing.”
“I like to think that youth are the solution. A lot of the time, sometimes we’re looked at as the problem and not involved in preparing the solution. And I think it’s just like a snake bite … its venom is the antidote to its bite. So I’m big on supporting the rangatahi.”
But first, they’ve got to come out of their shells. They’re initially shy about sharing their ideas and split off in their cliques from their schools. Getting the good out of a bad or awkward situation is all about scaring yourself and trying new things. That’s what comedienne and actress Madeleine Sami, who flew to the summit to give a presentation, tells them anyway.
She revves everyone up before they break off into groups to come up with project ideas. They’ve got to be one-off events or campaigns under a $500 budget, with a management plan and a break-down of who will do what; a big idea with a little budget.
Having those parameters feeds curiosity, says Madeleine.
Madeleine Sami Photo: Sarah Marshall Photography
“For me growing up, especially going to a co-ed school [like] Onehunga High School… there was always a sense of inferiority … I was aware that there were all these flasher schools that did fancier stuff and had cooler gyms and had more resources. I think that actually made us more inventive in a way, you know? We had to make our own fun.”
After the boost from Madeleine, the project pitches begin. There are songs, acting, colourful posters, and questions from the audience. At the end of the session, everyone’s told to vote for their 10 favourite ideas - those are the ones that will become a reality by receiving $500 funding each.
There’s the Pepi Pride campaign, which will collect donated new and used baby clothes to give to young solo mothers in Whangarei and “bring them together, so they know they have support and they’re not alone,” says the group in their project pitch.
Project 12 involves a group of 12-year-old kids creating colourful, attractive posters to post on public rubbish bins, so that people will see them and dump their rubbish there instead of on the ground.
Feed the Whanau wants to set up a sponsor-child initiative for poor and hungry children in their own communities.
Summit organiser Rosie Riggir says the kids are challenged to think and create. “Lots of young people in Northland haven’t ever had the opportunity to be involved in arts, they don’t really understand what arts and culture is. If I said to them ‘underground street fashion’ or something, they don’t have any idea.”
She’s stoked with the way everything’s turned out, and with youth workers from throughout Northland attending too, the projects are guaranteed support. “We’ve got mentors from all the different regions who are now, because they’ve been involved in the process, committed to ensuring that festivals, graffiti art, installations, pop-up shops, you know, all of this kind of creative activity, is now being guaranteed under the wings of all these youth workers, and it’s pretty fantastic stuff.”
Su-Young Seo, 17, was the leader of a project from last year’s summit that involved putting up hundreds of balloons through Whangarei’s town centre “just to spread some happiness, give Whangarei something to talk about, be happy about”.
“[People involved in the project] were really pleased at how the public responded. They were surprised, and they really liked it, especially the youth, who are always complaining that there’s nothing to do in Whangarei.
“It was a really cool experience to lead a fantastic project with fantastic people who were motivated to do things. It was just all-around amazing experience. I’m really keen to help out with another project that’s just going to make Northland better.”
Northland Youth Summit: https://www.facebook.com/NorthlandYouthSummit
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