The Youth Impact

Bringing the impact of youth in volunteering to our community

Earlier this year, while doing our routine statistics checks to see the trends in volunteering in the Southern region, the Ōtepoti tīma discovered that not only was youth volunteering on the rise, youth represented almost three quarters of new volunteer interest since March 2021. This showed that a significant amount of people under the age of 30 were looking for new volunteer opportunities more than ever before. Anecdotally, we were also hearing that more youth were turning up to volunteer roles as they were being blocked from employment and saw volunteering as a way to still contribute while searching for jobs.

This got us thinking about how best to support our young people. Our team decided to build on our successful volunteering to employment initiative - where people looking to get sector specific skills or more experience in a sector get the real world experience - and support our youth to provide opportunities to connect in and gain skills in the radio/podcast sector. Working together with Otago Access Radio, who hosts youth radio shows and podcasts for the Otago community, Volunteer South was able to bring together a group of dedicated rangatahi who are passionate about volunteering to talk about how their impact shapes the future of volunteering.

The Youth Impact is revolutionary in that it supports rangatahi to better understand themselves and their place in the world, while also building on sector specific skills in community radio. The team have big plans for the future of the show and while the recent lockdown has made gathering to do the show a little more challenging, the team trucks on regardless! With the first two episodes having aired, and many more in the works, we're hoping that the ability to connect in with what our rangatahi are doing in the community and how they see their impact will help to support a wider understanding in our community.

Listen in to the Youth Impact every Friday at 4.30PM live on Otago Access Radio here.

If you miss an episode or want to listen to previous episodes, you can find all episodes here.