Cadetships look to help employ youth

CADETSHIP: Laneshia Wycliff (back left), Steve Holmes, Bobby Howard, Kassara Boaza (front left), Ruby Martin-Rata and Santana Ngamoki are involved in cadetship programmes. PHOTO/STEPHEN PARKER

The Rotorua Youth Centre and Te Waiariki Purea Trust have each hired two young people on a cadetship as a creative way to help young people gain employment.

The cadetship is for young people who want to enter the social services sector.

It runs for a year and involves them studying a range of things such as the Level Three Youth Worker certificate, first aid and other training to launch them into future employment.

The Rotorua Youth Centre's cadetship is connected with Youth Hub, an online platform that helps young people access learning and content from service providers, education providers and employers across New Zealand.

Rotorua Youth Centre manager Steve Holmes said it was an initiative to help young people become more employable and use the skills they had, and be in a space where they could develop them.

He said rather than just hire people, they created an internship that would equip young people with new skills.

They wanted to add whatever they could to the cadet's "kite of skills" so that when they left the cadetship they had a whole lot more to add to their CVs, he said.

"One of the messages is to let other organisations know there are outstanding young people out there who, given the opportunity, can excel."

He said the Rotorua Youth Centre had received support and funding from the Ministry of Social Development and Lotteries.

"WINZ saw it as a great idea and put up some money for training."

Mr Holmes said each month the cadets from Rotorua Youth Centre and Te Waiariki Purea Trust would get together for peer support and to study together.

"One of the things I would like is for other organisations to consider doing something similar."

Cadetship co-ordinator Bobby Howard said they wanted to encourage other employers and businesses to have a future focus and invest in today's youth for the future.

She also said that, in a roundabout way, they were looking at some of the social issues in Rotorua in terms of youth, and showing another aspect of the youth culture in Rotorua.

The two Rotorua Youth Centre cadets, Laneshia Wycliff and Eru Pene, had been very proactive, she said.

Ms Wycliff said she thought young people were employable because they were more mouldable.

Te Waiariki Purea Trust cadets, Santana Ngamoki and Ruby Martin-Rata, said they were getting a look at the whole organisation and having a go in all different roles.