Youth Work at Green Bay High School is a partnership. It’s about local communities working together. Through an organisation called 24-7 YouthWork, three Youth Workers from local churches (Titirangi Baptist Church and Glen Eden Salvation Army) are in the school for about 35 hours per week.
Introducing 24-7 YouthWork at Green Bay High School from Green Bay YouthWork on Vimeo.
“As parents it has been most beneficial to have another positive role model involved in Nick’s life helping him develop skills and have a place to talk about stuff that he may choose not to at home. Over the time Nick has been meeting with Renda a good relationship has formed where Nick respects her and feels supported. Renda has gone the extra mile and met with us as parents to gain a bigger picture understanding of the family and issues surrounding Nick. We are very thankful for the involvement of 24-7 Youth Work in Green Bay High. We feel that it has made a real difference as Nick has struggled with often being bullied and marginalised. To be able to have a safe place to talk and learn skills for dealing with these issues that go beyond what the school can normally provide is fantastic. We believe that Renda’s combination of being well grounded combined with her own personal values and her counseling skills make her a real asset for the school.” -Grant & Leanne, Parents*
“Renda helped me with strategies to deal with bullying. She has helped me make new friends. She gives me time to express myself. She does things in a fun way and gives us something to look forward to at school.” – Nick, student*
“As a school, we are committed to supporting our young people, and having the opportunity to share that responsibility with members of our community is great. 24-7 is providing us with such a wonderful resource, and we are keen to extend and grow its potential.” -Sandy Begg, Deputy Principal.
* – names have been changed for privacy reasons
We have a great team of Youth Workers in Green Bay High School, who bring various skills, passions, and personalities!
Renda is originally from South Africa and didn’t know any english until her family moved to Aotearoa when she was 8 years old!
Renda Warner is the Youth Work Team Leader. Based at Titirangi Baptist Church, she has been doing youth work at Green Bay High School since Term 3 2010. She completed her Bachelor of Applied Theology in 2008, doing Youth Work and Counseling papers. In 2013 Renda trained as a Clifton StrengthsFinder Coach, and uses this to help students discover and operate in their strengths. She is passionate about the youth in our community, and spends 20 hours every week at Green Bay High (10 hours youth work, and 10 hours management). Her input into the school includes mentoring, running personal development groups, developing student leaders, and building positive relationships with students through spending time with them at lunch and interval.
Warren owns his own lawn mowing business, this gives him flexibility to fit work around Youth Work!
Warren Stubbs is a youth worker from Titirangi Baptist Church who has been at Green Bay High School since July 2012. He is married and the father of three daughters. He grew up learning all sorts of fun and amazing things from his Grandparents, Green Bay scout leaders, Green Bay-Titirangi Football coaches, and probably a few things from his parents and school teachers as well. In 1995 he completed his Bachelor of Ministries degree, focusing on youth work and pastoral care. Warren spends approximately 10 hours a week at Green Bay High, coaching and encouraging a young football team, mentoring, running lunchtime games, and looking for opportunities to be a positive voice and a listening ear for our students.
Melissa has a slight obsession with Chuck Taylors. She is always talking about them, who knows how many pairs she owns?
Melissa Bridle was a Green Bay High School student until 2007. Having completed her Diploma in Youth and Community Studies through Praxis, she returned as a Youth Worker from 2011. She is the Youth Leader at the Salvation Army in Glen Eden, and spends Mondays at school. She is involved in mentoring students, running personal development groups for girls, developing student leaders, and organising lunch time activities. This year she is completing her Balchelor of Youth Development at Weltech.
Matt moved to Aotearoa from England to work with Kiwi young people.
We have a number of volunteers who support the youth workers. Some support specific events, and others are involved on a regular basis. Matt Vaine works with Warren Stubbs to coach a Junior Soccer team, using this as an opportunity to role-model, build positive relationships with students, and encourage young men to do the best they can on the sports field.
What do the Youth Workers spend their time doing? Where are they working, where are they helping, where are they making a difference?
Renda // Young People Can from Inspiring Stories Trust
We couldn't do what we do without the support of these amazing organisations!
Stay up to date with the latest stories and successes happening with Youth Work at Green Bay High.
In May 2014, 24-7 YouthWork (24-7YW) surveyed 1,300 young people throughout New Zealand in 51 schools. The reason we did this was to measure ‘presence based’ youth work to see if the 24-7YW youth workers were having an impact on young people’s lives. To ensure professionalism we approached The Collaborative of Research and Training in Youth Health and Development (The Collaborative) to come on board as independent researchers who insured all feedback from young people was collected ethically and approved by the New Zealand Ethical Committee.
Attempting to measure the impact of ‘presence based’ youth work is a world first and we received overwhelming positive results from young people in the schools that gave feedback.
While 1,300 were surveyed nationwide, The Collaborative have also written a two page individual school report, which remains anonymous but gives insight for schools into the impact the youth workers are directly having.
Green Bay’s results are included below, but the biggest takeaway for me and my team is that the students love the work the Youth Workers are doing and just want more!
In May 2014, an on-line survey was run by 24-7 YouthWork in order to see how young people were finding the services provided. From Green Bay High School, 52 students participated in the on-line survey. The average age of participants in the survey was 14.8 years and 16 of the 52 students were male, while 36 were female.
New Zealand European | 44 |
Maori | 0 |
Pacifica Peoples | 2 |
Other | 6 |
Compared with how you were when you were first started working with your 24-7 YouthWorker how are you now?
The average score was 4.1 on a scale of 1 to 5 where “1=much worse” and “5=much better”.
Answer Number reporting this answer:
Much Better | 16 |
A little better | 23 |
The same | 11 |
A little worse | 0 |
Much worse | 0 |
How much do you think that your 24-7 YouthWorker has helped you?
The average score was 3.3 on a scale from 1 to 5 where 1 = ‘not at all’ to 5= ‘very much’.
Answer Number reporting this answer:
Very Much | 5 |
A lot | 21 |
Moderately | 12 |
A little | 13 |
Not at all | 1 |
Note that not all students answered the open-ended questions and some students gave more than one answer to the same question. The answers were coded so that general themes could be identified for each school. The three open-ended questions are summarised below.
In what ways could your 24-7 YouthWorker do things differently to help you (give a few examples if you can)?
There were 18 free text answers to this question from Green Bay High School.
Theme Number mentioning theme:
Help/talk more | 3 |
Helpful/helped me | 0 |
Provide youth/church group | 0 |
Provide games/movies/activities | 4 |
More/different meeting times/more workers | 6 |
Provide food | 0 |
Never worked with one | 0 |
Easier to find/clearer about what they do | 2 |
Listen to us/interact more | 3 |
TOTAL | 18 |
Since working with a 24-7 YouthWorker, what are some of the things that have changed for you for the better?
There were 71 free text answers to this question from Green Bay High School.
Theme Number mentioning theme:
Meet people/make friends | 12 |
Increased confidence/responsibility | 13 |
More motivated | 11 |
Attend /doing better at school | 1 |
Better behaviour/more positive | 10 |
Support from youth workers | 14 |
Learned new skills | 8 |
Not much/nothing | 1 |
Everything | 0 |
Food | 0 |
School Environment Better | 1 |
TOTAL | 71 |
Since working with a 24-7 YouthWorker, what are some of the things that have changed for you for the worst?
There were 36 free text answers to this question from Green Bay High School.
Theme Number mentioning theme:
Don’t know/don’t use one | 3 |
Nothing | 26 |
Too reliant on Youth worker | 0 |
Time management/school workload | 1 |
Stigma of getting help | 1 |
Some things/everything/a lot | 0 |
Bad/negative behaviour at home/school | 1 |
More emotional | 3 |
Other | 1 |
TOTAL | 36 |
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24-7 is funded by Green Bay High School, Titirangi Baptist Church, and the local community - only 50% of our funding is guaranteed from the church and the school
24-7 is funded by Green Bay High School, Titirangi Baptist Church, and the local community – only 50% of our funding is guaranteed from the church and the school. We are reliant on generous donations from local businesses and people for the other 50% to help us do the work we do with the young people of Green Bay and surrounding areas.
If you would like to donate to the work that we do there are two options:
Bank: BNZ
Account Name: Titirangi Baptist Church
Account Number: 02-0184-0020814-05
2. We can help you
If this is something you would like to do, please contact Jan Page to arrange a way that can work for you.
Titirangi Baptist has a dedicated 24-7 Youth Work account.
We’d also love it if you signed up for our newsletter to stay up to date with our work in Green Bay High School and the local community