CYC New Member Orientation

On the 15th of September we invited all potential and existing CYC members to an orientation evening. This gave potential new members a chance to meet and greet the team, find out more about the member role and CYC as an organisation, and ultimately see if CYC is a good fit for them!

With an awesome attendance response from all, we kicked off the night with the formal stuff. Letting the new guys know what our expectations are, what we strive to achieve and why we do it. This was received well, and enthusiasm stayed high!

Next came the fun stuff, in a speed dating style, we organised ourselves into groups of two and spent a minute talking to each other about some important and some less important questions for rangatahi in Christchurch - ‘Does pineapple belong on Pizza?’, ‘Trump or Hillary?’, ‘What are your two favourite things about Christchurch?’ and ‘What are some best ways for young people to keep on track with their wellbeing?’. This gave us a cool insight into other people's perspective, what is important to them and how they can see themselves working toward making Otautahi an awesome place!

After a whole lot of pizza, we used this opportunity to launch our ‘focus groups’ - an initiative which we are replace last year's ‘passion projects’. We found that while passion projects saw many successful projects to completion, it may be more effective to link up those passionate average about similar things into focus groups. We launched three group focusing on wellbeing, civics and environment. These focus groups will be the go to group for external organisations, will be leading on their related events and submissions, and overall champions of each section.

The night was thoroughly successful and enjoyable. We are pleased to announce our 15 new members:

• Emma Hartshaw
• Shane McInroe
• Sasindu Anjula
• Jayden Roder
• Jess McLennan
• Kasa Tuiano
• Uthara Varma
• Zac Porter
• Robert Willis
• Saoirse Hill-Shearman
• Ben O’Connell
• Laura Robinson
• Katie Harris
• Madeline Francis
• Matt Hanson

We are very excited to see what our new members and focus groups will be able to achieve in the coming months!