White Ribbon Youth Ambassador Leadership Programme (YALP)

History

An effective feature of White Ribbon’s strategy is to have Ambassadors, who are respected and influential role models, promoting White Ribbon messages to their network and community. Ambassadors play a vital role in building support, visibility and promoting White Ribbon’s messages to new groups. They can keep the White Ribbon messages alive beyond the November campaign. White Ribbon Youth Ambassadors.

One of our key aims with the Youth Ambassador Leadership Programme (YALP) is to give students the information about the issues we face as a society and encourage them to find their own way of communicating it to their peers. It is so important that young people get these messages not only from the adults in their lives, but also that they take ownership of this issue and message, if we want to see real change in the future. That has seen school dances, information evenings, assemblies, talks utilising some of our adult Ambassadors as well as our Spoken Word competition.

We are conscious of the impact COVID-19 and the resultant lockdown has had on schools, staff and students. To build on the momentum established last year we will instead be running a half-day online version of the YALP workshop in 2020. Students will still have the opportunity to learn about violence prevention and take on leadership on the issue within their schools without the need to take a full day out of the shortened teaching year and this opportunity also takes away any uncertainty regarding potential gathering restrictions.

Click to see the YALP process

This year the half-day online workshop will take place on 03 August from noon to 3pm. Like last year we would prefer to focus on Year 12 and Year 13 students as they already provide leadership within schools. In particular, we would like to bring in new students who did not participate last year, though that is entirely up to you. After feedback, we have increased the interactive discussion-based component of the programme but much of the underlying content will be the same. Students who participated last year are welcome to return for a refresher if they would like, but we feel it will be of most benefit to focus on equipping new students with the skills to lead in this space so that the programme has ongoing benefit for schools. After the workshop, schools will be assigned an adult White Ribbon Ambassador or staff member to provide support for students and teachers involved in the programme.

Some of the positives of this online version include the ability of schools to use a recorded version if students are unavailable at the allocated time. We envisage three sessions online with offline activities and discussions to complement the content from presenters. There might be a need to be a teacher or other support person to help facilitate the offline activities. Resources will be provided for the staff facilitator and the students.

White Ribbon Ambassadors David Cournane is our School Liaison for this programme. David is Head of Faculty, Health and Physical Education, at Aotea College and has been instrumental in reinvigorating the programme and ensuring it offers real value to schools. If you would like further information about the programme from a school perspective, please feel free to contact David coe@aotea.school.nz

If you would like to register to be part of this programme in 2020 or would like further information, please contact White Ribbon’s Assistant Manager Jo Campbell jo@whiteribbon.org.nz. There is no cost associated with being involved in this programme as we do not want to create any barriers to participation, but we are very happy when schools allocate mufti days etc. to raising funds for our charity!

Wellington YALP Process

Connect with schools to invite them to take part.
Interested schools invite Year 12 and 13 students to participate.
Schools register their participants with White Ribbon. Contact Assistant Manager Jo Campbell (jo@whiteribbon.org.nz) with the names, year and email address of students who are participating. Download the excel file for registering students.
White Ribbon sends information on the programme and workshop to students.
The half-day online workshop takes place from noon to 3pm on Monday 3rd of August.
Schools will be assigned adult mentors, either White Ribbon Ambassadors or staff, to support each school’s students and teachers.
Optional: Students begin to organize violence prevention activities.
Optional: Youth Ambassadors connect with students at other schools that are undertaking the programme in their area.

Scots College created a fantastic short film that takes the central ideas of the campaign and creates a personal, relatable film using students and staff to address the issue of what it means to be a man.

Resources

This page gives you an idea of the content from the 2019 YALP and will be updated.

Spoken Word Competition

One event that flows from the YALP is the Spoken Word Competition which allows students to present their ideas in a spoken word format. This is very powerful and White Ribbon has used this format to caputure the voice of students. The Spoken Word Competition in 2019 was held a at Wellington College with some high profile judges including the Justice – Parliamentary Under-Secretary Jan Logie. Details of 2020 will be announced soon.