C-Me mentoring success  

The work being funded under the Trust’s Māori and Pacific Education Initiative is attracting attention from other potential funders.

Trustline newsletter, March 2011

For the past two years the Trust has fully funded seven groups whose innovative work is turning around educational underachievement among Māori and Pacific community young people.

The funding lasts for up to five years, so from the beginning the groups have built the search for future funding into their strategic plans. Early positive results have seen politicians and educational experts taking a keen interest in progress. Now that interest is turning into financial support, with the C-Me Mentoring Foundation Trust securing a commitment from the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs (MPIA) to help fund C-Me’s Trades At School programme. This prepares high school students for apprenticeships and mentors them through the National Certificate in Mechanical Engineering, the equivalent of one year’s apprenticeship in 10 different trades.

C-Me has an agreement with the MIT  polytechnic to provide students with apprenticeship skills, 30 companies provide work experience and it has memorandums of understanding with 10 Auckland secondary schools, where C-Me mentors Year 12 and 13 students and manages their transition from school to tertiary education, trade-training or paid employment.

In 2010 the first 14 students graduated. Six went straight into employment leading to apprenticeships.  Two went on towards degree study, one has gone on to the Navy Service Academy, one to the police, and one to Competenz, an industry training organisation.   

Now a major manufacturing industry member is talking with C-Me to explore possibilities of incorporating the Trades At School concept between their industry and their local secondary school.

C-Me’s founder and CEO, John Kotoisuva, says the programme works because it is driven by the needs of industry, as well as the needs of the students.

“We bring industry and tertiary education into the classroom and take students into industry and a tertiary environment,” he says.

“Trades At School functions at the interface of secondary, tertiary and industry.  It acts as a bridge to the pathway of success. By the time students complete the programme they not only have work experience and qualifications on their CV, but also a clear vision of their future direction.

“Instead of being consigned to an unemployment benefit, low skilled work and poverty, youth attending Trades At School see options for their future and a number of vehicles that can enable them to contribute positively to society.”

Read more about C-Me and the other Maori and Pacific Education Initiative projects at www.initiative.org.nz