Youth Projects and Workshops
We develop and deliver, often in collaboration, advocacy and capacity-building projects for refugee-background youth which seek to build on their unique strengths and potential.
Recent Projects
Internship - the first step into youths' careers
ChangeMakers has set up a 3 month internship programme for young people from refugee backgrounds to develop their skills and gain work experience in youth and community development.
Interns are young people from refugee backgrounds aged between 18 to 25 years, who are enrolled in tertiary study or have completed tertiary study in the last eighteen months and are unable to gain employment which relates to their area of study and skills. Candidates for the programme will have an interest in community development and youth issues.
The intern works alongside ChangeMakers’ Youth Development Coordinator to deliver our youth activities, and then be placed for one month in an external agency.
The intern’s work programme is based around:
- understanding principles of community and youth development
- developing administrative skills
- building effective working relationships
- developing advocacy skills
- and developing project management skills.
The first intern started in August 2012. The next intake will be November/December 2012.
If you are a young person interested in finding out more about the internship or part of an organisation with an interest in supporting our programme please contact Kirsten – kirsten [at] crf.org.nz or call 04 801 5812.
Work from refugee-background youth exhibited at Te Papa
Inspired By is a short film that uses narrative, drama and poetry to share the stories of people from refugee backgrounds in New Zealand. The project, completed by refugee-background youth, is now showing at The Mixing Room exhibition at Te Papa.
Seven young people from Somalia, Afghanistan, Colombia, and South Sudan paid tribute to the people who have inspired them throughout their lives.
Inspired By was facilitated by ChangeMakers and Voice Arts Trust.
Entrance to the Mixing Room exhibition to see Inspired By at Te Papa is free.
Or you can watch the short film here
Past Projects
Media skills - youth walk the talk!
Hutt Valley youth from Rwanda, Southern Sudan, Eritrea, Ecuador and Colombia celebrated twenty weeks of developing their media skills this month. The youth who took part in the Multicultural Youth Media Project worked alongside local print and radio journalists and photographers who supported the young people to develop and publish their own work.
The project run by Refugees as Survivors (RAS) and ChangeMakers Refugee Forum aimed to build the capacity of refugee-background youth and to increa
se awareness of people from refugee-backgrounds among other New Zealanders.
Listen to the episode of YouthZone on Wellington’s Access Radio: 30 minutes of great music, interviews and news - check it out here!
The group also exhibited photos as part of Life Stills, a photo essay exhibition in Wellington. You can read more about it here.
For more information, contact Kirsten at kirsten [at] crf.org.nz.
Youth Leadership Project 2010
A youth leadership project which harnessed the energy and motivation of active and committed young people in refugee-background communities by providing training and support in their development as young leaders.
If you'd like to find out a bit more detail about the project, you can check out a presentation here.
Yunited Voicez 2009 
A youth media project which used media to build the skills and confidence of young people from refugee-backgrounds. From June to November 2009 we worked with Wellington Refugees As Survivors and over 20 volunteers to support seven young people through the project.
The evaluation, including project outline, is available here.
You can see the amazing work the young people produced on the project blog at yunitedvoicez.tumblr.com.
Youth Making Change 2009 
Youth Making Change, or the YMCs, were a group of refugee-background youth advocates who worked with the Youth Development Coordinator to identify key issues for refugee-background youth and then develop a project to address one. They wanted to support refugee-background young people when they first arrive in New Zealand, feeling that this was the hardest time for a young person. They ran a welcome event for young people in December 2009; and produced a short documentary about their lives, which aimed to show that although things are tough when you first get here, they do get easier.
Youth Making Change in 2009 was: Makuei Aken, Hajar Ali, Sandra Buless, Ali Hamid, Augustine John, Mohamed Mahyup, Feven Michael, Hamdi Yusuf, David Hakizimana, Matthew Phillip.
