IBA – Imagine, Believe, Achieve (Moemoea, Kimihia, Taea)
The IBA programme was established in 2020 to help youth from 15 to 24 develop enough skills and knowledge to successfully engage in employment, study or training. While there is a heavy focus on learning the key employability skills that employers look for when hiring employees, IBA also aims to increase their personal skills – to help them grow their confidence, increase their resilience, and learn how to lead a balanced fruitful life. The main goal of the IBA programme is to provide an alternative mechanism for engaging unemployed youth, or youth lacking in the necessary qualifications and skills, to ultimately become employable in a sustainable and sustained manner.
The 10/11-week programme includes visits to and by a number of supportive employers and organisations, who also explain the kinds of ‘soft’ skills they want in youth that they hire – being a team player, being a responsible and reliable person, and what they need to do to find and then undertake sustained employment.
IBA can take up to 20 participants at each intake, but they must be willing to participate, to be involved in all activities, and to train in the gym every day for an hour. There they are guided by the Tauranga Boxing Academy staff, who help them to increase their strength and fitness over the course of the programme, and help them to develop their own individual training programmes.
The programme provides a huge variety of experiences – visits to local historical sites, activity-based learning that complements the gym training, cultural insights that help them grow their knowledge and appreciation of New Zealand/Aotearoa’s history, budgeting, getting a licence, and many opportunities to give back to the community through undertaking community ser vice. For example, IBA often helps prepare food for the Kura Kai programme, which they can give to whānau who need that kind of support.
To assist their learning, there are four ‘breakout’ rooms by the main class space, where participants can grow social, artistic and literacy skills – a room for art, one for social games (like chess and board games), one for computer work, and a studio for learning how to ‘make’ music (rather than just ‘listen’ to music). These rooms in Youth Central have been a major boost to the programme’s development.
One of the main strengths of IBA is the pastoral support and mentorship element of the programme, referred to as ‘Post Placement Support (PPS). Once in employment or study, youth stay connected with selected IBA mentors. Our goal here is to provide a successful transition process, either into work or into a desired career pathway, until the youth are confident enough to maintain their new status on their own. In practice, we stay with each participant for a minimum of six months. Some have stayed with IBA for well over a year.
The programme is actively supported by over 70 employers, agencies or community partners. The number of relationships continues to grow as we develop the programme. Referrals for IBA come from seven local secondary schools and one wharekura, and key local agencies like MSD, Oranga Tamariki, Iwi groups, Police and MoE. However, many more referrals come from present and former IBA participants, or from their whānau and friends. There is an increasing number of ‘self-referrals’.
In sum, IBA was established to help those youth who may need more intensive support – a ‘wrap-around’ service – in order to succeed. We are aware that many youths are at risk for different reasons – such as, being truant from school for too long (for whatever reason), coming from poor or dysfunctional families, or dealing with drug habits. Some may suffer from long term mental health and trauma issues as a result. While we aim to respond to all ethnicities and genders, we are not set up to ‘cure’ those who need a longer term specialised approach. We are fortunate to have a psychologist on staff who can help those who are willing to change, but our focus remains on employment training, and seeing the potential in our participants to become great employees.
IBA Reference
We first met with IBA just over a year ago as we were really struggling to recruit a forklift driver. We spoke with Andre who advised he had a young gentleman who had just completed his forklift course and was ready to get stuck in. Matthew started with us the very next day and slotted right into the team. The support from IBA was present from the outset through joining Matthew on his first day, regular check – ins with both myself and Matthew to ensure there were no issues and regular site visits and catch ups in the early months. Matthew proved to be a very skilled forklift driver and we were so pleased to have him on board.
What we have enjoyed most through this process is seeing an individual grow so much both professionally and socially. Matthew has been with us for a year now and is a completely different person to when he arrived,. He is confident, happy and very much part of the team.
We were briefed very early on about the struggles Matthew had been through and where his strengths and weaknesses lay and it was through this understanding (and a few discussions with both Andre and Matthew) that we were able to really harness his strengths and help support him to grow into the confident and skilled warehouse team member he is today.
Thoroughly enjoyed Working with IBA and I’m sure there will be many opportunities to do so again in the future. What amazing work you do!
Zebra International
