KEY POINTS:
Growing up in Zimbabwe, Nomsa Botshiwe could not have dreamed of speaking in front of New Zealand's Prime Minister and working with one of the country's top fashion designers.
But that's what the 17-year-old McAuley High School student has achieved in the five years since she arrived here,
thanks to a mentoring programme for young women.
A member of the YWCA Future Leaders programme, Nomsa is one of hundreds of girls to have benefited from educational opportunities and leadership skills.
The scheme is now in its sixth year, and organisers hope to be mentoring 300 girls a year by 2011 but that depended on fundraising, said YWCA Auckland chief executive Hilary Sumpter.
Ms Sumpter said the programme at present included girls from schools in Auckland and Northland, but she hoped it would be nationwide one day.
A key fundraising event is the Leading Women Dinner, to be held at the Hilton Hotel in Auckland tomorrow night.
Nomsa spoke at the dinner two years ago in front of Prime Minister Helen Clark. She said the experience was "terrifying", but she was glad to have the confidence to do it.
"I think the programme gave me so much confidence and the ability to do anything I wanted to, and speaking in front of the Prime Minister was the big highlight for me."
Her mentor, Ann Martin, organised a day for Nomsa with designer Trelise Cooper, and she now works there on a voluntary basis during school holidays to gain experience.
She is "totally into" fashion and aims to be a designer one day.
The Future Leaders programme is now preparing to farewell its third round of "graduates" onto further education and careers as diverse as science, law and sport.
A new round of participants is being sought from Waitakere schools and more will be brought on board in the new year.
Ms Sumpter said 88 per cent of Future Leaders graduates had gone on to tertiary education, and the rest to travel or work.
"It gives them the confidence to achieve their goals when maybe they haven't had the opportunity to develop their own potential.
"The long-term vision is to get as many of these girls as possible onto the boards of big corporates in this country."
Ms Sumpter said only 40 per cent of New Zealand companies had women on their boards, which was not good enough for a country that prided itself on gender equality.
"We're not really as flash as we might think we are. Even when a woman is at the top of the organisation, often all the senior executives under her are men and we want to change that."