Term 3 was another busy term for the team as we carried out different retreats, programmes and launched a new initiative. With delivery almost every week, we were out and about engaging with heaps of young people from different schools across Auckland.
Retreats and Programmes
In our retreat delivery, we worked with Liston College, St Dominic’s Catholic College and Sancta Maria College, running retreats for Year 8, Year 10, Year 12 and Year 13 students. We explored themes around collective leadership, social justice, friendship and celebration.
We continued our classroom sessions in both St Dominic’s and St Peter’s and each week delved into a different set of ideas within the school Special Character.
Jade Speaks Up
For the fifth consecutive year, our team delivered Jade Speaks Up – a programme to support children’s wellbeing and safety. Backed by research and enforced by professionals, the programme is a powerful resource that enables young people to implement strong safety strategies and practises to support them, should violence occur in their lives. We worked with the Year 7s and Year 8s at de la Salle College last year and returned to run the revised programme this year. The feedback from the programme was positive from both staff and students and we look forward to working alongside Violence Free Communities in the future.
The Wellness Project
At the start of the term, our brand new Wellness Project launched with the release of our podcasts titled, “Conversations on Wellness”. This series aims to spark positive discussion around all aspects of wellness. They are released fortnightly and feature wisdom from people in our community talking about their personal experiences with wellness. Towards the end of the term, we piloted our in-school programme with lunchtime sessions at St Dominic’s and Sancta Maria. This was filled with different interactive activities that look at wellness in both a practical and reflective way. We are excited to kick start the classroom sessions starting in Term 4.
Although we won’t be running as many retreats in Term 4, we will still be busy running our classroom programmes and planning for 2020 starting with our Salt and Light Leadership Retreat in January.
