2020 Staff Highlights

For our last blog of 2020 we want to celebrate our SADD staff team’s highlights! Read on to see what each of the team found to be their favourite parts of this weird and wacky year!

Jay: 

Wow can you believe we are almost at the end of year and looking forward to the Christmas break! My highlights for the year would have to be getting out of lockdown and back on the road again to visit schools which is one of the awesome parts of my Job. I also enjoyed checking out a few school activities in person for the first time and seeing the awesome work that our SADD students created. Looking forward to seeing what 2021 holds :) 

Donna:
How to sum up 2020 and pick out key highlights! I guess there’s the obvious – wow what a strange year this has been!  We started the year rearing to go. We had 2 amazing new team members (Jay and Mia), I went on the AM show and talked about the issues with drink driving. I was about to head off to Rarotonga to help them set up a student-led road safety programme, we were looking forward to the conference and empowering more young kiwis to lead road safety activities in their communities – when Covid19 had different plans for us!

We reacted quickly and adapted to the needs of our community. We focused on well-being and getting through this together, and we did. I am so proud of the SADD team and our amazing national Leaders and SADD students, they rose to the challenge and didn’t let Covid get in the way of their focus on keeping our communities safer.  

Once out of lockdown I was so impressed with the number of students that participated in SAFER September, road safety week, helped us launch the Drive in the Moment toolkit and lead fantastic activities in their schools and community to build a road safety culture.

And finally, a big thank you to the current yr13 National Leaders – they have been inspiring!, to our partners and sponsors who have supported SADD and to the SADD team who never fail to impress me!

Bring on 2021 :)

Victoria:
My highlight for 2020 has been seeing the delivery team go from strength to strength during a very odd and unprecedented year. Two thirds of the Programme Delivery Leads were brand new to SADD in January 2020 and yet everyone has taken all the challenges of 2020 in their stride and still made awesome progress. Together they have developed some awesome new resources, relationships, videos, help-guides, student interviews, web and social media content and we are in a really strong position to show 2021 what’s up. I’m super proud of this team and can’t wait to see what they can smash out of the park in 2021!

Mia:
Since I started with SADD in January 2020 nothing has been ordinary. There are so many great memories, but one of my highlights was the mid-winter SADD & Police Pathways Program event. We had multiple schools involved and lots of support from our community partners.

Ti:
2020 has been quite a rollercoaster of a year! While things looked different for me at SADD this year, I honestly had a wonderful and fulfilling year! My highlight for 2020 is that the lockdown this year gave me the opportunity to learn so many news skills at SADD like adaptability in a changing environment,  how to code and design a website and most importantly the art of hiding that in my pyjamas during zoom meetings. I also had the opportunity to work with some of our year 12 National leaders in October, and it's truly an honour getting to know the amazing students who are involved in SADD. 

Lydia:
My highlight for 2020 has been seeing students be so flexible and resilient during what has been an unsettling and weird year! I loved seeing students connecting in different ways, collaborating with other schools, creating creative online content, and changing up their activities and adapting and making things work. I know that it was disappointing for some students not being able to run what they had planned, but seeing you all make things work and still manage to make a difference was such a highlight and I was so encouraged and impressed by that! I also loved all the workshops, events, and school visits I went to over the year, they are always the best! 

Roger:
2020 saw me sail through my second anniversary with SADD. As a team, we had the year planned out but a once in a lifetime event changed all of that. Again, as a team, we rose to the challenge of reimagining SADD for the times. Students and National Leaders also rose to that challenge and as a whole - the organisation came through the lockdown period, stronger, wiser and with confidence in our ability to adapt. Credit has to be given for our set of graduating National Leaders. We couldn't have done what we did without them.

Our SADD staff team may be small, but we are a passionate bunch who really care about empowering young people and making Aotearoa a safer and better place! Have an awesome holiday and Christmas, and we will see you back with the blog in late January 2021.  

Ngā mihi, 
The SADD staff team :)