Hear reflections from four young leaders working in the voluntary sector about the future of volunteering and youth. They will cover facilitating youth engagement in organisations, why youth may be choosing not to engage, and what youth volunteering can be.

Participants will discuss the issues raised in breakout rooms, and there’ll be time for questions.

This is a great opportunity to ask young leaders questions and discuss surfacing opportunities and challenges facing the sector.

Note that this is a live panel session with no video to watch this time.

About the panelists:

Matthew Goldsworthy is an award-winning 22-year-old social entrepreneur and creative based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Winner of the 2020 AIMES Service to the Community Award, Matthew is the Founder and CEO of Youth Arts New Zealand and a regular consultant to nonprofits, Government agencies and creative sector organisations. Matthew has volunteered with many organisations including TEDxAuckland and Play It Strange, and has a keen interest in the development of youth volunteering. He is also a passionate musician and composer, having performed with New Zealand music icons Jamie McDell, Avalanche City (AKA Dave Baxter) and Jason Kerrison (Opshop), as well as performing for Mick Fleetwood and Bob Geldof as part of their visit to Aotearoa in 2019.

Joanna Li is the current Volunteer and Events coordinator at Volunteer Wellington. Her background is in working with volunteers in youth, migrant, and rainbow sectors, and she is passionate about removing the barriers which currently prevent these communities from entering the sector. She is one of the organisers of the Wellington Student Volunteer Army, who during the COVID-19 lockdown, mobilised over 500 students in the wider Wellington region to run errands for those in need.

Teana MacDonald: I started a job at the Wellington City Mission as a Youth Intern. I am now the Development Coordinator Volunteer Services. As a part of this I am developing programmes to engage youth in the volunteer space here at the Mission. I am very passionate about engaging youth in organisations through volunteering. Alongside this I am the Youth Pastor at a church in Porirua

Chantelle Cobby is a 23-year-old with a heart for community mobilisation, community wellbeing, and social change. In 2019, she founded The Microvolunteering Collective - a community group dedicated to breaking down the barriers to traditional volunteering, and enabling anyone (regardless of their age, gender, background, or experience), to make meaningful contributions to their community through bite-sized volunteer tasks, known as microvolunteering. Driven by the belief that micro-moments can create macro-change, The Microvolunteering Collective turns microvolunteering into a new approach to community action. To date, they have enabled 600 microvolunteers to contribute over 900 hours of their time to local and national community causes.

Outside of this, Chantelle provides fundraising, marketing and communications services for ShelterBox New Zealand (an international disaster relief charity), Garden to Table (a charitable trust empowering tamariki to grow, harvest, prepare and share great food), and Impact Hub Waikato (a global network supporting impact entrepreneurs).