CAMP LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT NATALIE DUCHESNE

(North

Island Camps Facilitator)

The first time I was part of a camps leadership weekend was in December 2019. I remember it in a blur if I am honest. We gathered on Pōnui Island for a leadership weekend that the Pōnui camps crew have faithfully put on for a few years. It was the first time I got a sense of our camp leader culture at large. The next year, with the vision to equip our spring and summer camps, we started another North Island leadership weekend. Despite the curveballs and limitations of Covid, we pulled off an exciting gathering. The people who came were energetic, enthusiastic, and hungry for more. This was promising for future gatherings.

In 2021 we facilitated a new weekend for Team Leaders who organise our camps across Aotearoa. To facilitate a specialised retreat to upskill and support them was vital to both leader and camp development – this is a retreat we now host every second year. In 2022 we added another weekend for leaders in the lead up to winter, increasing it to three North Island camp leadership weekends a year with around 40-60 young adults attending each one. We introduced an optional skills training workshop at our May 2022 gathering. Braving torrential rain, hail, and extreme wind, we upskilled twelve people in the Pirongia bush to ensure a commitment to safety on our camps. We also started partnering with churches and offer places on these weekends to upskill other leaders for their own church camps.

The annual South Island leadership weekend has also grown in numbers over the past few years, and we are considering another event later in the year. How humbling to see the growth and excitement building for this expression of leadership development!

Jayden Meads

(South

Island Camps Facilitator)

It was 2015, and I had just finished high school. Grandma was living in Geraldine at the time. One Sunday morning Ben Necklen attended her church sharing about the SUNZ E3 Wilderness Expeditions. She thought this experience would make an amazing Christmas present for me. She nailed it, as E3 opened me to the world of the outdoors and the start of an incredible career journey.

A year or two later I bumped into Paul Humphreys at Cashmere Presbyterian. We got chatting and from that day on, I was fully involved with SUNZ as a camp leader and attended SILT (South Island Leader Training). At the time of volunteering on camps I was studying a Bachelor of Sustainability and Outdoor Education at Ara Institute of Canterbury. I am grateful that I had the opportunities to apply the skills from the degree I studied on camps and the skills I learnt from SUNZ camps and SILT to my degree. In turn, my SUNZ experience helped me achieve my final degree. I valued the intuition of the masterminds behind SUNZ camps and SILT to meet me where I was at and be able to upskill and learn in a safe, supportive environment where I could give things a go. And now, in my role as the South Island Camp Facilitator, I am loving the challenge and opportunity to provide support for others to grow in leadership.

Our Vision For Future Camp Leadership Training

Our SU camp leaders are a unique and exciting group of individuals. They are instinctively drawn to our programmes, demonstrating a passionate commitment to shaping the faith of young people in the context of creation. These young people are tactile, relational, and energetic. So, what does it look like from here to be continually investing in this growing group of leaders?

We have reached a pivotal moment in this programme and have recently renamed our North and South Island leadership training to GATHER North and GATHER South. This is in response to a broader kaupapa than just ‘training,’ and to focus on three threads we see as essential to shape and stitch together these camp leader training weekends.

Space is curated for camp leaders to further develop leadership skills in the outdoor youth sector

Opportunity for leaders to connect and collaborate

Priority on investing in spiritual health what we have done the past few years what our leaders are asking for what we have identified as a need

We invite you on our journey, whether that be in camp leadership, to join us on the different expressions of a GATHER weekend, to share this opportunity with people you know, or to take part in shaping what this training programme could look like in the future.

Interested in being a camp leader? Visit sunz.org.nz/youth/get-involved-as-acamp-leader/. Want to help or find out more? Email natalie.d@sunz.org.nz or jayden.m@sunz.org.nz.