Helping hands open door to brighter future

Mentor Karina Ankhara encouraged Otara high school student Jasmine Wiel to get closer to her mother. Photo / Greg Bowker

Epsom teacher Karina Ankhara's first gift to Otara teenager Jasmine Wiel was a photo of herself and friends in Paris with the words underneath: "This could be you, Jasmine."

"It meant that I can do anything if I put my mind to it," says Jasmine four years later.

For Jasmine, 14 at the time and two years out of Samoa, the sudden arrival of a power-dressing Palagi "mentor" who once worked for Louis Vuitton was a dramatic culture shock.

"At first it was difficult," she admits. "But I got to know Karina. She was a lovely lady. She doesn't care about my background."

Jasmine and Karina are one of 120 often-unlikely pairings in a female-only mentoring programme run by the Auckland YWCA, which is looking for 60 more mentors for students at Henderson and Onehunga High Schools, Tamaki College and Mt Roskill Grammar.

The voluntary Future Leaders programme aims to help students in mid- to low-decile schools who are neither top achievers nor at risk.

"The girls we target are the ones with some leadership potential - not the top layer, the next layer down, the quiet girls at the back of the class who, with a bit of support, can really achieve," says co-ordinator Kathryn Doughty.

The programme chooses students at the end of Year 9. They work with their mentors from the start of Year 10 until they leave school, usually four years later.

In each of the programme's 12 schools, deans encourage likely students to apply, and 15 students are picked.

Jasmine applied "because it was a free programme" and because she knew a previous student on the programme whose mentor took her to America.

Ms Ankhara, now 62 and a grandmother of three, runs the Gateway work experience programme at Epsom Girls Grammar and heard about Future Leaders from a friend.

"I thought that's something I would like to do," she says.

The 15 students and 15 mentors are brought together for an introduction meeting, also attended by the girls' parents, followed by a day of games and other activities.

"We do speed-dating - they ask each other three questions over three minutes," Ms Doughty says. "Then they each rate their top three."

The mentor commits to contact her matched student at least once a fortnight and visit at least monthly.

"Visits" for Jasmine and Ms Ankhara have ranged from a cup of tea to day trips to Piha or Waiwera, or a few days in the Coromandel or with Ms Ankhara's elderly mother in Warkworth.

Jasmine has met Ms Ankhara's partner John, her son and his family, and her daughter and Cook Islands son-in-law and their daughter.

Ms Ankhara, in turn, has got to know Jasmine's mother and three younger siblings.

She has even brought Jasmine and her mum closer together. Four years ago Jasmine lived with her grandmother, who did not get on well with her mother.

Her father is a chef in Canada, and she hasn't seen him since she was 4.

"My mum and I are best friends now," says Jasmine.

In her first year in New Zealand, Jasmine stayed out of school for most of the year.

Today, she is a prefect at Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate, has a part-time job at a fashion store, which Ms Ankhara helped her find, and hopes to study health science at Auckland University next year.

"If I get into university I'll be the first in the family," she says. "My mother says she is proud of me."