A day in the life of Lydia, South Island Programme Delivery Lead

You may have seen our delivery team at a workshop, or visiting your school some time and perhaps you’ve asked, what do they do when they aren’t hanging out at school with me? Do they just wander about hopelessly, hoping someone will invite them to their school?! Check out what a day in the life of Lydia is like and maybe you will get a bit of an idea.

As you probably know our SADD team is not particularly massive so we all do a whole range of stuff, and often each day (or even each hour) can be very different. I like to think of my job as primarily focused on empowering and helping young people to do cool things and make a difference in their schools and communities in the road safety space. The Delivery Lead role is very student or young person focused, we are all about helping get the SADD programme going in schools, and supporting students that are involved with SADD. 

I am going to let you in to a bit of how some of my days look like here in Christchurch as the South Island Programme Delivery Lead. 

First things first, coffee! Breakfast often changes up, but I always have a coffee, and I pretty much always walk my dog Fern on the beach near my house. Before saying goodbye to my partner and heading off to mahi!

Once I am at work, whether I am on the road or in the office, I usually start off the day by going through emails and catching up on a bit of exciting admin, and quite possibly also making a to-do list for the day to make sense of my brain and what I am up to. If I am in the office I usually have a bit of a catch up with Vic who I work with here in Christchurch.

Today one of my tasks to do first thing is a whole lot of follow up from last week’s travel week down south. After a week away on the road doing workshops and visiting schools there is a lot of follow up our delivery team does, and usually a bunch of admin to catch up on. I am currently loading new contacts into our systems as well as getting in touch with students and teachers about conference, giving them info about how to register and what funding may be available. Also getting helpful resources and info to students that requested it while I was meeting with them, and making notes about what kind of support they might need, or what community connections they may be keen on. 

Next thing up on the agenda today is our SADD staff team meeting, we have a whole team meeting every second week via google hangout. This is a time to catch up on where everybody is at and touch base with how things are progressing with workshops, conference and other things! Usually there’s a bit of banter and pretty much every time without fail someone's computer or internet doesn't work properly which can be amusing. The joys of technology and all being spread out around NZ! 

Today I am planning out some social media for the week, queuing posts and making sure that you guys get some real value from our Instagram and Facebook. Might be sorting workshop photos to post, info about conference, general activity ideas, helpful links and articles, or just memes. Liking our Instagram and Facebook are a great way to feel connected to SADD as a nation-wide movement and stay up to date with what’s happening, so we would recommend you give us a follow. If you have any great ideas or even memes, hit me up as we are always open to ideas!

This afternoon some of the stuff I will be getting up to is:

• Planning and getting in touch with some schools and community partners for my next week of travel up the top of the South Island and West Coast and finalising those plans.

• Sorting out all the things I need for this afternoon’s SADD Term One Workshop for Selwyn. I will print off everything I need, make sure I have my PowerPoint sorted, and that everything else is ready to go. 

• Planning a school visit for next week, and coordinating those details with a student there. 

As I said earlier every day is different for me, some days I am attending road safety meetings, or creating resources for SADD, I also help oversee this blog making sure we have content.  My favourite thing however, is when I am out and about visiting schools and community groups, getting to meet inspiring young people who want to make a difference in their communities. That is why I do my job! 

So that’s it for my day in the office, I am off to a workshop now where I get to hangout with students from the Selwyn region and hopefully get them pumped and informed for SADD this year. 

After the workshop it’s home time for me! At this time of year that often involves making dinner and sorting out the copious amount of veggies I grow in my backyard!

Hope this gives you a bit of an insight into some of the things I get up to as a delivery lead! As I always say, my main job is to support young people to succeed. So hit me up if you have any questions or ideas at all, and keep on changing the world :)