Building Aotearoa’s Leaders of Tomorrow
For the last 10 years, Inspiring Stories founder and EHF Fellow Guy Ryan (Cohort 3) has been investing in young people to make a difference for our future. “What began with a bold vision to back young people to change the world has become an intergenerational movement for impact,” he says.
“From climate change to inequality, mental health and the new economy – the call for leadership has never been greater. Young people have the biggest stake in the future and investing in their success is mission-critical for all of us.”
Inspiring Stories has supported more than 10,000 alumni to engage in the big issues of our time, build capability and spark hundreds of projects and ventures that have gone on to make a tangible difference for Aotearoa and beyond. Their flagship programmes include Festival for the Future, New Zealand’s biggest social innovation summit; The Impact Awards, which provides $30,000 in prizes to celebrate and support young New Zealanders making a difference across six key areas: climate, enterprise, inclusion, wellbeing, local and global impact; and the year-round Future Leaders programme which is creating transformational opportunities for young people in some of New Zealand’s most challenged rural and provincial communities, 70% of whom identify as rangatahi Māori.
Alumni have gone on to win major awards and represent New Zealand on the world stage. They’re leading action on climate change, building the next generation of purpose-driven businesses and creating more inclusive communities and workplaces. Guy says there are literally hundreds of stories he could tell, but he highlights the work of Sophie Hanford who founded New Zealand’s School Strike for Climate and went on to become New Zealand’s youngest elected Councillor.
“Sophie took part in our Future Leaders programme in 2018–2019, spoke at Festival and was the inaugural winner of The Impact Award for Climate in 2019. The $5,000 prize money that Sophie received in winning The Impact Award was a vital resource in helping to scale up the School Strikes in September 2019, which was one of the biggest civil actions in New Zealand history, with an estimated 170,000 people turning out to march for greater action on climate change.”
Another alumni example Guy highlights is the team at CoLiberate, who are working to tackle New Zelaand’s mental health crisis. “They were one of the country’s first organisations to be accredited to deliver the Mental Health First Aid Training Certificate. They’ve now trained more than 1,000 Kiwis to provide mental health first response.” CoLiberate grew out of an accelerator programme run by Inspiring Stories in 2016; they’ve since attended and spoken at multiple Festivals, delivered workshops and training for Guy and his team and one of the co-founders, Sarah Tuck, took out The Impact Award for Wellbeing in 2020.
“We’ve seen young people like Aroha Lawrence from Kaikohe who have significant lived adversity go on to win the Prime Minister's Youth Award for services to her community. We’re creating opportunities for systems change and building bridges across generations – connecting the ideas and energy of young people with senior leaders who control resources, policies and power.”
The Impact Awards Ceremony is a simple example of this, he says, with a 50-50 table sales model that sees young people seated alongside CEOs and senior leaders from business and government. The organisations that buy tables (priced at $2,500) receive half the seats at their table, while the other half are gifted through scholarship support to young people from across the nation.
Guy’s passion for social entrepreneurship began at university when he started learning more about climate change and environmental issues. He went from making surfing and skateboarding films to founding an award-winning film production company, creating an adventure festival and getting involved in a range of purpose-driven projects. Over the past decade, Inspiring Stories has grown from a one-off grant from the Vodafone Foundation to a team of 20 staff operating in more than 10 locations throughout Aotearoa.
COVID has had a big impact on their work, he says. “Last year we ran Festival for the Future as a virtual summit, which attracted attendees from 57 countries. We built partnerships with the Obama Foundation and the UNDP and had some incredible people involved. We had young people in refugee camps in Rwanda getting up at 4am to tune in, people in Nigeria getting up at 2am, and attendees from right across the Asia–Pacific. At the same time, some of our Future Leaders closer to home here in rural New Zealand couldn’t afford data or didn’t have access to devices. COVID has amplified a lot of existing inequities.”
Looking ahead, Guy sees the biggest need for support for New Zealand’s young people in our most challenged rural and provincial areas and is working to expand their Future Leaders programme to new communities where there is demand. The programme is place-based, free and accessible for young people, and has a major focus on learning by doing. Throughout the year, participants access various layers of mentoring and support to build their entrepreneurship and leadership capability while working on real-world projects that make a difference in their backyard. They also receive scholarship support to attend Festival for the Future and The Impact Awards.
“The difference that the Future Leaders programme is making for young people is profound. We’re seeing young people break cycles of intergenerational poverty, be the first to pursue tertiary education in their wider whānau, find meaningful employment and run for local Council in places where no young people have run before. We’re aiming to expand Future Leaders from the current six communities to twelve over the next 3 years and, in time, scale up to every region nationwide. We’ve got big goals to strengthen pathways into employment, entrepreneurship and leadership. But, as a free programme for young people in predominantly lower socio-economic communities, the single biggest challenge is funding.”
Guy says the generosity of partners and supporters has been vital to their success, but they need support to scale up. Supporters range from individuals who donate $5 a week, through to corporate partners like Xero who provide both financial and in-kind support to help build capability. “If you take a community like Kawerau, census data from Statistics NZ will tell you that the median income is only around $20,000 a year. It’s one of the lowest socio-economic communities in the country. The opportunities that young people here have access to are poles apart from the opportunities available in places like Auckland or Wellington. The partnerships we’re now starting to build alongside our Future Leaders with companies like Xero have the potential to be game changing – building future-relevant skills and providing pathways into meaningful, high value jobs that can be done remotely. Imagine.”
To enable the Future Leaders programme to reach more of Aotearoa’s communities, head to: www.futureleaders.nz/support.
For further information and tickets for Festival for the Future (30th July-1st of August), visit: www.festivalforthefuture.co
To learn more about The Impact Awards and connect with Aotearoa’s top young impact-driven talent, visit: www.theimpactawards.nz
To learn more about Inspiring Stories, visit: www.inspiringstories.org.nz