For High Schools in the Wellington, Hutt Valley, and Porirua area, we are looking for 12 students to receive a scholarship to attend a year-long one-day school that teaches:
- Leadership and mentorship skills
- Syntropic Agroforestry (planting food forests)
- Youth Working skills
- EcoTherapy - using nature to support mental health
- Non-violent communication skills to increase collaboration skills and self-compassion.
What sort of High school student should I nominate?
- Big Hearted
- Likes working with younger kids. Has natural empathy.
- We are especially looking for young men whom others naturally look to for guidance to work with our students who may not have a positive male role model in their lives.
- Girls who have a strong sense of who they are and are not easily swayed by external pressures.
- Playful students with a solid sense of fun but still have their head screwed on straight.
- In possession of a healthy dose of common sense.
- Likes nature and animals.
- Hard working at things they are interested in.
- Does not need to be academic. We are looking for kids with more holistic "body" intelligence than strictly "head" intelligence.
- We are looking to the kids that people turn to when things get challenging.
Please shoulder-tap these students directly and suggest that they apply.
The selection panel is made up of the Natural Leader's "OG's" These are year 8-10's who went through the pilot program of Natural Leaders in 2024 and who are codesigning the next iteration.
The students will ultimately be working as a cohort of 10 young men and a separate group of 10 women / non binary students. These students will be learning and growing together over the year and will be working with students at a local primary school to help them develop a syntropic agroforest (food forest) at their school.
The final part of the program will the attendance at a rights of passage in the summer.
Please print off this PDF and give it to any student you think should be involved.
