Help for those who fall through cracks

Trainee Vaaparamu, 17 (left), and Taniora Tautari, 12, treat The Pearl as a second home. Photo / Sarah Ivey

For Trainee Vaaparamu, 17, a garishly painted drop-in centre in a corner shopping block in Otara is "home".

"I come in here every day. I just live around the corner," he says. "There's table tennis, there's a pool table, I catch up with some mates."

Trainee left Otara's Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate in Year 10. He doesn't blame the school.

"It was all good, it was just myself," he says. "I just stopped going. It was getting a bit too hard."

He got a six-month job in a drink factory, then had a period out of work, and has started a youth training course at Manukau's Creative Learning Scheme this year.

Crosspower Ministries founder Sully Paea, who started "The Pearl" on the corner of Otara's Johnstones Rd and Pearl Baker Drive a decade ago, says centres such as this are needed to reach thousands of young people who drop out of mainstream schools and never reconnect even to formal alternative education centres.

"It's like the alternative to the alternative for those who don't fit into the alternative, those who have fallen through the cracks," he says.

"They are supposed to go to courses but they are not connecting. They are not confident enough. There is still a need for something between alternative education and those courses."

Nationally, 73,800 young people aged 15 to 24 were not in either education, training, employment or caregiving in the first quarter of this year, a fraction over one in every nine young New Zealanders.

"We see more and more young people becoming disconnected," Mr Paea says. "Sadly, what we see happening is that a lot of them, when they are not contributing, they are into burglaries, they are into young girls having babies at very young ages - children having children."

Mr Paea, who grew up in the gangs around Pearl Baker Drive and still lives nearby, wants to provide what he calls "character-building education" at The Pearl - "just the basic personal development, character development, work ethics, budgeting, hygiene".

The Catholic Caring Foundation has donated four computers, but he needs more, and he is applying to funders to pay a tutor.

"I've done voluntary for a long time, but those days are long gone," he says. "It's damned hard work."

This year, Mr Paea has also started a motorbike workshop class, funded by the ASB Trust.

SEEKING ANSWERS

Saturday: Alternative education.
Teens in Third World schooling
When the mainstream model doesn't fit
A far better alternative to dropping out
Monday: Truancy and dropouts.
School dropout levels fall over past 10 years
Tuesday: Issues of transience.
Message sinking in: switching schools bad for kids
Absenteeism often cry for help
Transient students struggle to catch up
Wednesday: Who kicks kids out?
Second chance works well for student
Expulsion seen as tool of last resort
Aorere strives to improve record
Thursday: What can be done?
Help for those who fall through cracks
Trust moves in well before students get out of control
Schools can't do it all on their own