Over the October school holidays, two National Leadership workshops took place hosted at the AA Building in Wellington, and the Fire and Emergency NZ Woolston Station in Christchurch. Both groups of SADD’s amazing National Leaders gathered to gain personal development, create some great content for SADD, and have some discussions about best-practice, problem-solving big issues, and collaboration.

In Wellington, students were tasked with creating new videos to explain our refreshed 6 principles. This saw them following the design thinking process to plan, script, and film 6 short clips for students to use throughout the country when explaining SADD in assemblies. They also led a discussion with NZTA and the NZ Police around "good practice" and what this means for SADD.

In Christchurch, our students got deep into the SADD brand and vision. They rewrote the Why, What, and How of SADD to make it relatable and easy to understand, and were responsible for making a new promotional video for SADD, explaining what we are, how we work, and why we are important. This resource will be used in schools, workshops, and at stakeholder meetings in 2020 and beyond. Students also chaired a forum with the NZ Police and Fire and Emergency NZ around how to better collaborate with school groups across the country.

Both weeks were filled with a lot of hard work and our National Leaders did such a great job at completing their tasks and projects. We still managed to fit in a lot of laughs and fun though, and about 1000 tik tok mentions! Below are some of our National Leaders highlights of their time at the workshops.

“I loved going up to Wellington and meeting incredible people who are so passionate about road safety. It was awesome to be amongst other people who shared the same passion as me and also feel respected and a part of something great.”

— Skylah

“Personally, I definitely found the experience of a taste of what firefighters go through in training incredible. It was an experience I couldn’t have had without this workshop and it gave me an idea of even a little bit of what our emergency service workers/volunteers have to go through to deal with the crisis’ in the community.”

— Oksana

“The collaboration between the police and NZTA alongside SADD provided me with an incredible insight into the roots of what SADD can achieve. To do this with students from all different backgrounds was a pleasure and empowering”

— Holly

“The chance to get to meet like minded teenagers was incredibly fun and eye opening. This event gave me a chance to not only learn more about how we can all make our roads safer, it also helped me create more connections that I will be able to use in making Gisborne roads a safer place to drive.”

— Sterling

“NLP provided an amazing opportunity to meet and work with like-minded teenagers, and gave me so much inspiration for future ideas and events that I can use to have a positive impact on my community. We were able to meet up with the Fire and Police departments, which was amazing as it helped emphasize how we can use these connections to help make our communities better places, and work together to lower our road toll.”

— Ben

“My experience at the NLP event was once in a lifetime and I gained so much knowledge from those around me. It was amazing to be around such passionate people and challenge myself.”

— Katelyn

“Christchurch NLP was an amazing opportunity to meet new people, build connections with community groups, and develop our leadership skills! Being able to have NLP at the Woolston Fire training centre provided us all with foundation to develop connections with emergency services to promote positive road user behaviour together. Massive thank you to the SADD team and everyone else who made this possible, we all had a blast and took away way some invaluable skills that we can pass on in our own communities.”

— Caleb

“This experience was absolutely amazing!! We discussed a variety of important topics that I and everyone around me were so passionate about. The leaders encouraged and supported us in a way that made (me) feel very comfortable and welcomed. The Team leaders inspired me to speak out and express my point of view. This was an experience of a lifetime and I really valued this time with the team, I am really happy with our progress and can’t wait for more days and more action in the near future.”

— Star-ra

Thanks to all our amazing National Leaders for all the work they do, can’t wait to see what’s to come in 2020!