Prime Minister's Youth Programme: Nation's best inspire teens

Willie Apiata VC offered his support to the participants of the 'design your own hoodie' youth workshop. Photo / Nick Reed

VC hero Willie Apiata helps with poetry-writing, among other things, at unusual workshop.

Designers, a poet, a politician and our most famous living soldier helped to inspire a group of Auckland teenagers in an unusual creative workshop yesterday.

Saatchi & Saatchi designers, poet Courtney Meredith, Youth Affairs Minister Nikki Kaye and Victoria Cross winner Willie Apiata were there to help 20 girls in the annual week-long Prime Minister's Youth Programme to write a poem and design a hoodie to illustrate it.

Another 80 teens, including a boys' group run by ex-All Black Michael Jones' Village Trust, which Mr Apiata also visited, are taking part in activities ranging from cooking with top chefs to a mud run.

Jacinta-Rose Hirst, a 17-year-old from Rutherford College who took part in last year's programme, said the scheme gave her more confidence and affirmed the value of changes she was already making.

Her life started hard. Her Samoan dad left when she was 8, leaving her Palagi mum to bring up seven children on her own. They had to move constantly, making it difficult for Jacinta-Rose to make friends.

"We had so many young kids that landlords didn't like it," she said. "We had to move down to Napier once. We were just always moving around."

In her first year at college she fell in with a group that was into drugs and booze.

"I was in a bad neighbourhood, we call it the 'hood. I had some bad mates - not bad people, just did some bad things."

Her education pretty much stopped.

"I absolutely hated school, I guess I just didn't like the feel of it, I didn't really like to mingle with people," she said. "I started wagging a lot. I was never at school. I would be there like once a week, probably sometimes not even once a week."

Her turnaround started when the school sent police to her home.

"It wasn't really till I noticed how much it affected my family, I guess that's what pushed me to do a lot better. I picked myself up to show some pride for my family."

She noticed her teachers "starting to get closer to me, I'm not sure if they were told to or what".

She joined a Pacific mentoring scheme run by the Village Trust and later a youth group called Turn Your Life Around.

About the same time, her family moved to a different neighbourhood, where they have settled for the past three to four years.

"That is actually quite a big deal to me because that's what helped me get out of that group as well, so no more of the environment of alcohol and drugs and stuff like that." She started getting "excellents" in class.

"I just changed completely. I started going to school every day. I absolutely loved it."

Her dean invited students to apply for the Prime Minister's programme, and nominated Jacinta-Rose on the basis of her application explaining "what kind of things I had been through and what success I'd had".

She gave the speech at a dinner with the Prime Minister near the end of the week, and spoke at Parliament for the Youth Week Awards last May. She is also one of 25 "youth ambassadors" going to Gallipoli this year.