YouthworX

Team:

Kenneth Williams

2nd year Bachelor of Communication Studies at AUT.

Timothy Holmberg

2nd year Bachelor of Communication Studies at AUT.

Community Group:

YouthworX

This group acts as an umbrella organisation that looks after all of the youth-focused community groups on the North Shore in Auckland.

What they try to do is provide a space where youth-based organisations can share information and resources. Their main aim is to connect, empower and promote the other groups on the North Shore and help invigorate and strengthen the youth sector by having them work collaboratively.

Mentor:

Adele, Pamela & Sheena

The Challenge:

The main issue that they wanted to tackle was the way the community groups seemed to double-up on resources, tactics, and in some cases purpose, rather than collaborate and streamline the process. However, they didn’t have the resources to achieve this goal.

Much of the time and effort of these community groups went to administration and purchasing resources rather than their overall goal.

So overall what they needed was:

• A database where organisations can discover what other organisations have in terms of services and objects they are willing to share.
• A way to attract the other youth-based companies, organisations and charities to use the service.

The Solution:

To solve the main desire of YouthworX we used our knowledge of networking and new media to help them create a space for these other community groups to start communicating in.

Before tackling advertising and promotion Youthworx wanted to achieve synergy and communication within the youth sector, so this is what our solution addressed.

So we created:

• Online networking spaces where these organisations can collaborate, network, engage and discuss anything.
• A YouthworX profile was created on Ning, a social networking service that is easily personalised with logos, colours and features. A forum was attached to this site so that community groups could discuss their needs.
• Contact information pages for each community group involved were set up.
• ‘Help’ topics and pages were created to guide users through the site’s functionality.

We also organised sessions with community groups to train them in using the site and get them familiarised with each other and the services available to them.

The Result:

After much back and forwarding with website designs and structures we finally had the site up and running for our first meeting with the community groups.

“We had tested the usability of the website with our friends and family, but to gain the approval of YouthworX and others in the community sector that would be using it in the future was thrilling.”

The site that we created helped move YouthworX that much closer to their over-arching goal. We achieved a space that would help the community sector on the North Shore collaborate and paved the way to a more streamlined, successful youth sector.

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

The yMedia Challenge was definitely one of the most rewarding, exciting and educational experiences that we took part in during our university years, and that’s saying something!

It was personally rewarding in the sense that we helped out someone who couldn’t achieve these goals on their own. To be able to use our learned skills in a real life environment and actually give back was incredibly worthwhile.

Directly through the challenge Tim also got hired for a year’s paid internship at Sun Microsystems helping out with their national marketing campaigns: so he is infinitely grateful to yMedia, YouthworX and the opportunities that they provide. Hence why he has been a part of the yMedia management team for two years running!