YouthLaw Tino Rangatiratanga Taitamariki

Team

Red Nicholson

Studying for a Bachelor of Communications at AUT

Nathan Champion

Aka Documentation Extraordinaire, studying for a Bachelor of International Communications at Unitec. It sounds cooler, and he’ll tell you it is, but it’s really not.

Community Group

YouthLaw Tino Rangatiratanga Taitamariki

They are a Community Law Centre that provide a free legal service for children and young people, run community outreach programmes, and advocate for young people through submissions on proposed Govt legislation, etc.

The Challenge

While YouthLaw’s target market was, perhaps unsurprisingly, young people, they lacked the tools and skills to engage with an increasingly web-savvy young population. Their primary form of engagement was over the phone, and their service was advertised through school visits, various forms of print media and appearances at community events.

We saw a massive opportunity for YouthLaw to use the wealth of social media tools available to spread the message about who they are and what they do.

The Solution

It was obvious to us that YouthLaw needed to engage in the spaces where young people ‘hung out’ online. At the time of the challenge, it was a pretty big deal that sites like Bebo and Facebook were being culturally remodelled as the ‘new mall’, a place for young people to hang out and spend time with their friends.

But it was never going to be enough to simply create a few accounts and leave them to it. We set about creating user manuals, screencast ‘how to’ videos, a training DVD, and we even engaged each staff member in a comprehensive training programme which included:

1. How to upload a video to YouTube
2. How to post a comment on Bebo and Facebook
3. How to create Bebo/Facebook photo galleries, polls, facilitate online dialogue, and heaps more

The Result

I think the fact that YouthLaw are still currently actively using these social media tools, regularly interacting with youth communities online, and are confident in their ability to do so is the best result we could’ve hoped for, really. Although it might seem commonplace now, back in 2007 the level of web-savviness amongst NGOs was surprisingly low, so it was great to be able to enrich YouthLaw’s communications by empowering them with the tools and skills necessary to engage with young people in their space, and on their terms.

What did your team get out of the yMedia Challenge, and why would you recommend that other people get involved?

It was really personally rewarding to get involved with a community organisation and use our knowledge and skills to help them out. Not only did YouthLaw gain new tools to help them participate in the online conversations young people were having, but as a team, Nathan and I ‘discovered’ skills and knowledge that we didn’t even know we had! Simply by growing as web-savvy Gen-Y’ers (read: slight geeks), and spending hours on YouTube and social networking sites, it became apparent that all this familiarity with online youth communities was actually considered immensely valuable by those who weren’t raised in such a web-centric society.

Plus, I met my current girlfriend through yMedia, and she’s pretty choice eh.