Year 13 National Leaders’ Farewell
We want to take a moment to say a big thanks to our Year 13 National Leaders who are finishing up their time at school and with us!
We have been lucky enough to have had our current Year 13 National Leaders around for 2 years now, and sadly it is that time of year where we have to do our farewells. We are sure we won't become strangers with them, and some may even continue to contribute now and then. But it is important to honour people and celebrate how they have contributed, (and far out have this group contributed)! So this blog today is one of the ways we will be saying thanks to our Year 13 National Leaders!
Activities and events in school
Running icebreakers and talking at regional workshops
Lunchtime and after school meetings with their SADD groups
Countless social media videos and posts
Blogs
Special individual projects
Conference
Local council/community meetings
Research
National Leadership Programme events/workshops
Catch-ups with the SADD team
Resource and content creation
Leadership development
Honest feedback and knowledge sharing
Community collaboration and connecting with Community partners
Brainstorming and coming up with ideas for SADD
Regional representation
Media interviews and articles
Zoom calls
Community events
And more……
As you can see SADD’s National Leaders get up to a whole variety of stuff throughout their time with us, and as a staff team we really rely on them to be the representatives of all of you (the young people involved in SADD nation-wide). We have been so impressed with this current Year 13 group; they have been enthusiastic, intelligent, committed, innovative and so much fun.
Some highlights have been seeing them work on individual projects (from shooting films, researching the cannabis referendum, to looking into diversity within SADD), and also growing in their own personal leadership skills and development. Over the two years we have seen them step up and become awesome leaders, who no doubt will continue to make waves wherever they end up.
Here’s a message from our National Manager Donna:
“It has been an absolute pleasure to get to know these amazing young leaders. They were successfully recruited into the National Leadership Programme in 2019 and during that time they have been vital to the success of the SADD programme. They have given their time and energy to attend leadership programmes, help design content for resources, create new activities, represent SADD in the media, meet with Ministers, adapt for covid-19 response and work on road safety projects to help keep all rangatahi safe on our roads. Thank you for your participation and passion, I am so proud of you all.”
So! Ben, Parvi, Skylah, Olivia, Oksana, James, Ang, Sterling, Lily, Holly, Natalie and Star-ra, thank you so much for being part of our National Leadership programme. We have a couple of other things up our sleeves for you, but we want to publicly thank you and wish you the best for the future whatever you do, and wherever you go. We hope that you will take with you the experiences and skills that you have gained from being a part of SADD’s NLP. Thanks for being part of such a worthy cause!
If you are in Year 12 next year (or know anyone who is), then think about applying for this awesome programme, it is worth your time!