Hunter Mentoring News

August 2011helping mentor groups to help young people

CDSE donationsWe’d like to thank Hexham Bowling Club, The Ad-amstown Club, Beresfield Bowling Club and City of Newcastle Diggers for their generous donation of $15,000 from its Community Development and Sup-port Expenditure (CDSE) Scheme. This will allow the HYMC to continue to offer educational scholarships to students aged 15 and above who are experiencing hardship or need assistance to be able to complete their studies.

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This issue includes:•HYMCEducationalScholarships•CDSEdonations•EncouragementAwards•HYMCevents

• Forum• Mentors’BIGDAYOUT• Networkingmeetings

•Memberactivities•HYMCAnnualGeneralMeeting

Encouragement AwardsNew Awards help disadvantaged primary school students get the most from their educationTen primary school students from the Cessnock and Kurri Kurri area who are doing it tougher than most will receive financial help with their education thanks to the support by an anonymous donor of a new pilot program by Hunter Youth Mentor Collaborative.

The HYMC Encouragement Awards were pre-sented by HYMC chairperson Kay Sharp AM to four students from Weston Public School, four from Kurri Kurri Public School and two from Abermain Public School on Thursday August 4.

The Year 5 students will receive a total of $1,000 paid across years 5-7 at school to help them to make the transition from primary school into high school. (They will be paid $300 in Years 5 and 6 and $400 in Year 7.)

Mrs Sharp said research over the last decade shows that early intervention is essential if Australia is to improve the educational outcomes of many dis-advantaged students in the public school system.

Encouragement Awards

presentations

HYMC Educational ScholarshipsTime’s getting short! Members are reminded to get their applications in soon for HYMC scholarships for eligible students. “Eligible” means any student who has been or is going through a mentoring program OR has had significant contact with a member orga-nization over a period of time.

Further information and an application form can be downloaded from the HYMC website, www.hymc.com.au, and assistance is also available for comple-tion of the form.

It’s not just about academic achievement: scholarships may be granted to students who dem-onstrate the drive and determination to achieve a high level of education and/or experience financial hardship.

Applications close 30 September 2011.

Kurri Kurri Public

Abermain Public

Weston Public

Annual General MeetingThe HYMC’s AGM was held on Tuesday 9 August at the Hunter Wetlands Centre and was well attended. The Chair, Kay Sharp, outlined the activities of the HYMC over the past 12 months, and it was surprising to hear how much we have achieved! (Copies of the Chair’s report will be circulated to all members and be available shortly on our website. It was good to hear that the HYMC is financially in a comfortable position. A Planning Report for 2011-2012 was also submitted for the consideration of the members.

This year’s theme “Mentoring in a Multicultural Society” has formed the basis for our Forum and the forthcom-ing Mentors’ BIG DAY OUT, and has certainly generated considerable interest. Kay Sharp took the opportunity to an-nounce HYMC’s theme for 2012, “Identity: Who am I?”

It was with some degree of sadness that the meeting heard of Melinda Smith’s decision not to seek re-election to the Executive Committee of the HYMC. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Melinda for her sterling contribution to the cause of youth mentoring and youth development in the Hunter Region since 2002. She was the driving force in the forma-tion of the Hunter Youth Mentor Collaborative in 2005 (when she acted as interim chairperson) and has been instrumental in many of the Collabora-tive’s initiatives over the past six years. Her skills, especially in the area of marketing, will be sorely missed. It was, Melinda tells us, a difficult deci-sion and one not lightly taken, but the demands of a growing family, a job and pursuing long-awaited university studies made it inevitable.

However, Melinda will not be lost to the HYMC. It was the unanimous decision of the Executive to award Life Membership (the other Life Mem-ber, Brian Doyle, who was the first Chair of the HYMC, has also continued his association with us, and was present at the AGM to conduct the election of officers). A Certificate of Life Membership was presented to Melinda by our Patron, Professor Trevor Waring (see picture).

Professor Waring then gave an address to the meeting on “Making a Difference”. This was (as usual) both very amusing and extremely interesting, and gave us considerable food for thought. We’d like to thank Professor Waring for his words, and also wish him a speedy recovery from bronchitis, coughs and other nasties.

The following Officers were elected to the Executive Committee: Chair Kay Sharp Vice-Chair Judith Wood Treasurer John Dickeson Secretary Katherine Heinrich Members Ivan Gant, Kevin Berger, Patrick O’Flaherty

Kay Sharp, Chair, HYMC, Melinda Smith and Professor Trevor Waring

Coming Events . . .

Members’ Networking Meeting : Tuesday 13 SeptemberRetaining Volunteers: Encouraging, rewarding and providing feedbackAt our next meeting the Hunter Volunteer Centre will present ideas and strategies that are designed to attract, retain and sustain a volunteer workforce which in this cur-rent climate is a hot topic for many community organisa-tions and will be invaluable information for HYMC mentor groups. The “Bridge 2 Volunteering” program run by the HVC is an orientation session to introduce volunteer con-cepts to a broad group of prospective volunteers and to enlarge the general understanding of volunteers – ie what does it mean to be a volunteer, do’s and don’t’s, effective communication etc. It can be used to assist the filtering process of volunteer selection or as a recap post-selec-tion, and also as a ‘refresher’ course for current mentors. A light lunch will be provided.

Mentors’ BIG DAY OUTIt’s on again!

Following the success of last year’s Mentors’ BIG DAY OUT, on Saturday 29 October the HYMC will again be hosting a “thankyou” to all Hunter mentoring organisations and their mentors. We urge our members to promote this to all staff and mentors involved in youth mentoring and youth development. We have managed to secure

Ashley Gordon (ex Newcastle Knights player)

as our keynote speaker, and this promises to be an exciting day.Full details will be coming to you (very) shortly.

Forum 2011 : Mentoring in a Multicultural SocietyThe 2011 Forum on the topic of “Mentoring in a Multi-cultural Society” was held on 11 May at the Samaritans Centre, Warabrook.

About 50 people attended and all rated the speakers very highly. Professor John Maynard spoke about the dif-

ficulties (and pleasures) involved in mentoring students from an indig-enous background, and Tonkoh Kamara gave a fascinating account of his life journey as well as discussing the problems encountered by students from sub-

Saharan Africa. A measure of their success was their involvement with the audience at the afternoon tea break, and the interest shown in joint projects proposed by mem-bers with Tonkoh Kamara.

After the break the speakers, together with Lulu Tantos from Northern Settlement Ser-vices, took part in a panel session. It was good to see so many people actively involved in these discussions, which indicated that the panel/discussion session has obviously become an important and valued part of the HYMC an-nual forum.

Networking Meetings: APRIL The “Six L’s” of connectingMentoring and indigenous cultural awareness was the topic for discussion at the April HYMC Members’ meeting at the Hunter Wetlands Centre.

Executive Director of DALE (St Philip’s Christian Foun-dation) Kevin Berger introduced widely respected Aborigi-nal elder and traditional owner from the Ngempa people in North Western NSW, Uncle Paul Gordon, who delivered an inspiring presentation about his experiences working with and supporting indigenous kids.

Uncle Paul believes it’s all about the 6 Ls; Lore (know-ing the rules that help young people relate to their culture), loving, looking, listening, learning and leadership. HYMC has received very positive feedback with comments that the framework can be applied to many other areas within mentoring to help build relationships with young people.

Uncle Paul has been a TAFE teacher for more than 20 years. His passion is living and teaching traditional lore and cultural values in modern Australia. He is a widely respected Aboriginal elder and traditional owner from the Ngempa people in North Western NSW.

JUNEThe REAL D ProjectThe challenges and rewards of developing a program aimed at improving the engagement rates of young people from an African refugee background living in inner-city Newcastle were the focus of the HYMC network meeting on June 7. Guest speaker Jessica Kime, Partnership Broker for Career Links (HYMC member), is managing the REAL D Project (Refugee Education and Language Development) which began as a pilot scheme in 2010. REAL D has since developed into a nine week course operating in three public and three catholic inner city schools covering language development, literacy and numeracy along with work place exposure, mentoring and vocational education support. An expansion strategy includes developing REAL D into a sustainable model with funded premises and strong support networks. There are also plans to extend the program to the Congolese, Korean and European com-munities with ownership of REAL D to eventually be in the hands of school, community and industry based partners with Career Links serving as a committee member.

Meetings hosted by the Hunter Youth Mentor Collaborative continue to attract considerable audiences (and in-terest) - see below for a brief summary. The September meeting will be addressed by Tony Ross of the Hunter Volunteer Centre, and in October the HYMC hosts the Mentors’ BIG DAY OUT. The December meeting will be the usual round-up of the year’s activity, and a look forward to 2012.

Community Activities Lake Macquarie (CALM)There’s an awful lot going in Lake Macquarie these days, unfortunately too much to mention in this newsletter. Our website is undergoing an overhaul at the moment, and shortly you will all be able to enter your events into our Mentoring Diary. In the meantime, if you are not a recipient of the CALM newsletter but would like to be (it’s jam-packed with valuable information), contact Brad Dunn at ydo@calm.org.au.

A website concerning funding which may be of inter-est to our members:http://www.newcastle.nsw.gov.au/services/community_funding

Hunter Youth Mentor CollaborativePO Box 3149, Merewether, NSW 2291

email: info@hymc.com.auwebsite: www.hymc.com.au