Dannevirke programme aiming to help young people decide their futures

Janine Morrah believes the Citizen You programme can help people see what's possible. Photo / Supplied

A programme designed to help young people make better decisions for their future is about to take off in Dannevirke.

The Citizen You programme, facilitated by Janine Morrah and Annick Janson of Plumtree Learning, will be held at Tararua REAP next week.

Morrah said Citizen You was a pilot programme being tried for those aged between 11 and 23 for the first time.

She said it had been created with the help of funding from the Eastern and Central Community Trust.

The programme used positive psychology techniques.

"It's basically goal-setting and goal-getting so it's a visioning tool that the individuals work on by themselves," Morrah said.

She said her role as facilitator was more to guide the participants, rather than teach them what to do.

"It's their own thoughts, their own goals, their own aims that we then assist them to work towards. We help them strategise and start to see what's possible. And the ways to get it successfully."

Instead of each participant starting with a high goal that might not be so easy to reach, the goals would be broken down into achievable steps.

They would then be able to build on those steps.

Morrah said it was like being the "ambulance at the top of the cliff rather than the bottom". By catching young people early enough, she could show them what was possible, instead of them getting into trouble.

"The opportunities for trouble are a lot more public and quite often catastrophic in the sense that they become absent from our culture rather than having the ability to say, 'Well, I've stuffed up and I'm going to make amends here'."

Another part of it was showing the participants that even when they didn't succeed at something, they could try something else instead of giving up.

The programme had been chiefly aimed toward those who had been disadvantaged in some way, but Morrah said the definition of that was fairly loose.

"It might be that you might not be meeting your milestones at school. You might have some kind of unrecognised disability or mental health sort of situation," she said.

It was also more about giving people the wherewithal and the tools to make decisions they were comfortable with, rather than reacting to events or expecting someone else to do things for them.

Morrah said the hope with the programme was to identify those who took part as peer facilitators so they could go on and train to deliver the programme to their peers.

"They feel enabled and empowered to go on and continue this process, having experienced it themselves. And that's much more effective."

She said by doing so, it would strengthen the community with people coming through the programme that could better support others in their community.

Morrah had worked with Tararua REAP in the past and one of the things she liked about doing this programme with them was that it would complement other courses they offered.

"I think the pairing with Tararua REAP has been phenomenal. They're very responsive to this. And they really do see that it's got very real potential. The working partnership with them I think is just incredible."

Once the pilot programme had been completed, Morrah and co-facilitator Annick would take a report back to the trust. The hope was to get enough funding to continue offering the programme to the wider community.

"We believe that this is of value to the community," Morrah said.