Rangatahi-led, Values Based Leadership
Self-determination through values-based-leadership.
Our rangatahi can already build healthy futures for themselves and their peers. We just help them get there quicker.
Ma te whakarongo, ka mōhio; ma te mōhio; ka marama; ma te marama, ka mātau, ma te mātau ka ora.
Through listening, comes knowledge; through knowledge, comes understanding; through understanding, comes wisdom; through wisdom, comes wellbeing.
Our primary purpose
Shoebox Christmas exists to let our tamariki know the community has their back. We connect with local schools, kura kauapapa Māori, kindergartens, kōhanga reo, and community organisations like Women’s Refuge centres to deliver manaaki in the form of Christmas gifts for tamariki.
We do this because the more positive experiences our tamariki receive, the more likely they are to make positive decisions in the future. We work with everyday whānau in the community who then put together safely personalised Christmas gifts for these tamariki.
Koirā te aronga mātua o te kauapapa. This is the primary purpose of the project.
But we can do more
Personal leadership, kaupapa (project) leadership, resilience, and transferrable skills for our rangatahi (young people).
In 2021, to meet the increased need in the community, and to start making the upstream difference we believe we can, we piloted a secondary kaupapa at Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira in Porirua. We tested the idea of powering up rangatahi to lead Shoebox Christmas.
The concept worked so in 2022 we refined the concept and kaupapa further.
That year, we coached 8 rangatahi from Kaikohe, Ōpōtiki, Pukerua Bay, Waikato, Taranaki, and Manawatū with the skills needed to run their own Shoebox Christmas projects in their region. We coached and mentored these rangatahi leaders through the process of them leading the project. The goal was to remind our rangatahi of the potential they already have by giving them a safe space to apply leadership and transferrable skills in a proven, community-outcomes-focused kaupapa.
We held regular wānanga (workshops) on key leadership skills needed for the running of the project and then stood beside the rangatahi as they applied those skills in real-time on the project, leading it in their way. Eg. after our wānanga and workshop on effective communication - difficult conversations, the rangatahi leaders then applied that learning by replying to trickier emails or social media posts from gifters or the community.
In 2023, we're working on making this programme NCEA accrediable. Our tuakana or big sister/brother rangatahi will coach other rangatahi in a Tuakana-Teina framework, including delivery through schools.
What rangatahi told us about our programme
These are healthy learning tools, beneficial for future careers. This is transferrable.
We're given tokenistic leader roles, we want to take part in purposeful leadership like this.
We want personal growth with wellbeing focused on while we're at school, not just academic learning. Doing this at school would make my year more meaningful.
How I'm taught matters, I need to be properly supported, by people who get me.
Values Based Leadership modules
In 2022 we worked through all the main skills we thought contributed to running a successful kaupapa like Shoebox Christmas. At the end of the year, the rangatahi taking part decided on which of those were most important to the project, and valuable in other contexts (transferrable). This is what guided the learning modules we're refining for delivery now.
Pesonal Leadership - Values to Vision to Goals
Effective Kōrero & Communication
Prioritisation and Time Management
Whare Tapa Wha - wellness & Leadership
Kaupapa & Project Leadership
Creating & Testing an MVP
The Power of Data
How it works
We're using an online learning platform and a hybrid model of self-paced learning with online and face to face support, to ensure we can deliver these learning outcomes at scale.
We hold fortnightly wānanga or group discussions, and alternate fortnightly 1:1 coaching sessions as needed, delivered by our rangatahi leaders who have been through these modules and the process of leading their own Shoebox Christmas projects.
Each fortnightly wānanga on the above modules and skills are lined up with a particular phase of the project being led by the rangatahi, for application and embedding of learning. The online wānanga are attended by rangatahi across the country leading these projects, creating shared learnings, collective leadership, and peer relationships.
When the project is finished, the kāhui (collective) will have the opportunity to stay connected including further help translating the skills learned into relevant job interviews and CVs from the kāhui itself and mentors as well as stepping into tuakana or coach roles and helping other rangatahi in the next cohort.
Whakapapa
The approach to for our rangatahi programme is guided by the taonga tuku iho (gifts from those before us) passed down to us by our tūpuna (ancestors) in the form of the values lived by them.
The approaches of tuakana teina, wānanga, collective responsibility and innovation to problem-solve are practices they used to give life to the values of rangatiratanga, manaakitanga and tiakitanga. Feedback from rangatahi during our pilot, and research from the likes of Hinekura Simmonds, Niki Harré, and Sue Crengle (Te Kete Whanaketanga, 2014) strongly influenced how those values and approaches were articulated in our learning programme.
Helping our rangatahi use these approaches to navigate the worlds they live in are why our programme exists.
Outcomes
Mahi whāinga - Purposeful activity
Connecting our collective aspirations, and a proven feedback loop of community outcomes with hands-on learning.
Matatautanga - Learning for competence
We spend a lot of time in the programme reflecting on what we've learned, and how/where these learnings can be applied elsewhere.
Whanaungatanga - Positive, peer and whānau relationships
Internal collective goals and challenges, plus a new scaffolding of activity to base external relationships on. These relationships and collective responsibility towards collective aspirations are important connectors to help our rangatahi navigate the multiple worlds they sit across.
Tuakiri Māori - Identity & cultural strengthening
Woven throughout every module is the reminder that our rangatahi have these skills, we've applied them for generations, we're good at them, and they're sometimes strengths we didn't know we had. Often all that's unfamiliar is the context they're housed in or the labels they've been given.
Rangatiratanga - using our strengths to lift others
When our rangatahi better understand and trust their strengths, they can use them in a role-modelling capacity. This not only embeds those strengths as personal but also expands their impact into the community with a network effect of more potential leaders seeing more options for themselves.