A healthy environment for Waikato youth

Zeal is a not-for-profit youth organisation that provides places of acceptance and belonging, as well as a listening ear and practical help for youth throughout New Zealand.

The Waikato Story recently sat down with Lehi Duncan, manager of Zeal in Hamilton, to learn about how Zeal came to be, why he got involved and the impact Zeal is having for Hamilton youth.

Zeal started back in 1999 after a 14-year-old boy named Jeff Whittington was murdered in an anti-gay hate crime in Wellington.

“It’s unknown if young Jeff was gay, but the two men who beat him up thought that he was and so they beat him and left him for dead in central Wellington,” Lehi said.

“After this, from my understanding, a group of people from a church and a group of people the council got together and said, ‘Wellington needs a safe space for young people’ so after a lot of korero they came up with Zeal, which was like an underage night club providing a safe space for young people in the city on Friday and Saturday nights.

“It was an alcohol-free space for young people to come into the city, dance and have a good time in a safe place where they were looked out for.,” he said.

Lehi first got involved with Zeal in Wellington.

“I was involved in my church youth group in leadership and I’d always thought about becoming a high school guidance counsellor and so I enrolled in a course in Wintec to study for a bachelor of counselling. Five days before the course was to start I had a skateboarding accident and fractured my skull, so I had to defer my studies.

“During my recovery, I thought more about having a youth-specific approach to my learning, but this wasn’t offered in Hamilton at the time so I moved to Wellington in 2012 and started doing a certificate in drug and alcohol youth work at Weltec with the plan to do a bachelor of counselling after that.

“As part of my certificate I had to do a placement somewhere and I’d known about Zeal through a couple of friends. So, I got in touch with Zeal Wellington’s manager, Scott, and he graciously signed up to do my placement there I had to do 30 hours and I think I completed that within the first two weeks.

“After that placement the manager said ‘cool, we will see you next week’. So, I ended up volunteering for another year, but during that year I kind of realised that Zeal’s ‘alongsider’ approach to supporting young people was more suited to my personality than the counselling space.

“So, I decided to throw myself whole heartedly into this messy life-consuming world of youth development. After 12 months of volunteering they hired me as an after-school youth worker and photography program coordinator as I had a passion for photography from my school days.

“After a couple of years of doing that, the longtime manager, Scott, who had been there for 10 years decided to step down from his role so that Zeal Wellington could launch a social enterprise café down in Wellington called Stories with the aim to employ young people who graduated from our barista programmes.”

Lehi says he was just at the right place at the right time, as when the new managers arrived,

he had been the longest running current staff member at Zeal Wellington and part of his role became preserving the kaupapa of who Zeal was, what they do and why.

“Which then meant that 12 months later when the management role came up in Hamilton I was asked to apply and so I did and ended up getting the role and moved back home in June of 2016.

“I like to think that Zeal has grown really organically from its origin story. Zeal has grown as a response to the needs and wants of individual young people in front of our youth workers. For example, after a while of coming along to the weekend events back in the early 2000s a bunch of young people started turning up during the week after school saying that they didn’t have anywhere else to go, so Zeal opened up its drop-in space.

“Fast forward to 2013 and Zeal started to have a presence in Hamilton.

“They wanted to create a youth development centre in Hamilton CBD. So, this building launched in March 2015 and again it grew out of the needs and wants of young people in the central city who wanted a safe space a place for them to develop the skills and resilience that they needed and wanted. Zeal met with these young people, started running events here and got them involved with what we were doing and then over time that’s turned into young people leading who we are and what we do at Zeal.”

Zeal has six staff in Hamilton.

“From 3pm till 5pm Tuesday through to Friday, we hang out with our young people, run classes, provide connections. We don’t want anyone to leave Zeal without having the opportunity to become part of our whanau.

“We also hire our venue out to other community organisations to run events, and run our own as well. Our events are generally music-based and run by young people, and we’ve started to see some real strong youth engagement in live music shows again.”

Lehi said Zeal couldn’t operate without community support and one of their biggest supporters was Wel Energy Trust.

“They have helped us with the vital resources needed to run a space like this. Having their support means we can keep our doors open and keep our lights on and not have to worry about menial tasks and actually be able to keep our focus on the young people in front of us.

“Our building is also home to three other youth organisations - IDEA Services, Te Ahurei a Rangatahi, and Waikato Queer Youth. Support from groups like Wel Energy Trust not only help’s Zeal to create a home for young people, but these other organisations as well, who each serve a different community or young people connect them to their identities, cultures and whakapapa in different ways.

“We received a multi-year grant back in 2015. Wel Energy Trust has not only helped us financially but has connected us with other like-minded organisations and groups connecting us with other stake holders who’ve been keen to support us.”

For more information visit Zeal’s website here.