Learning Futures

Looking forward to future scenarios is a process we regularly take time for. There are three approaches to this:

Mission Statement

Our mission is achieved by sharing the caring we have in our hearts with one another. We want to start this with visioning what children aspire to, as young people are our future and legacy. This means listening to and consulting children as our equals, ensuring they have a voice and standing up for them. Then they can be fairly heard and actively listened to in all our hui and community forums – where we are wondrously fortunate to have them present, enabling us to be a whanau where everyone has a unique contribution to make.

Strategy

We work alongside student mentors, young people, children, parents and whanau. In addition to this, we build relationships of trust to enable volunteers to discover their  strengths, talents and capabilities. Furthermore, we harness each student’s potential by matching them with creative “learning by doing” activities supported by school principles, lead teachers, student mentors and volunteers. As a result, each student realises their unique capabilities, improves upon them and becomes a master of their own learning paths in life. We facilitate regional wananga and interactive workshops for student mentors and volunteers. We enable wananga participants to have time to share issues and challenges over a cup of tea or meal. By getting to know one another better we discover everyone is a leader as they have unique skills, talents and capabilities.

Vision

At Te Whakaritorito we mentor cultural well-being events and group mentoring activities at schools, marae and holiday venues. We provide mentoring services for whanau with children struggling to discover their self-identity, interests and capabilities. In addition we grow innovative “learning by doing” activities with children & whanau by aiming for a series of sessions to have an agreed upon plan and goal.

We work at partnering with community agencies and groups to enable volunteers, young people and whanau to become more self-supporting. Finally, we develop action research questions that participants would love to be asked, enabling everyone to receive relevant feedback of how to improve group mentoring activities.

See also, a video on Cooperative Learning that relates to the very things we look to the future for.