About us

The Fast Track Inclusion (FTI) Trust works to create transformative, measurable outcomes for vulnerable children, youth and their families by strengthening emerging community leadership.

The trust carries out social innovation applied research to accelerate social inclusion for marginalised people throughout New Zealand.

The Fast Track Inclusion (FTI) Trust was launched in 2012 by a group of academics and business people who work in social change. The trust works in partnership with Plumtree Learning.

Trustees worked in a range of social and environmental project which created good value for society, however when funding ran out, these projects were typically shelved. The trustees wanted to extend the value that these projects could still produce by contributing their time and knowledge, beyond the projects' funding life. The FTI trust does mostly volunteer work as described on its website, applying for philanthropic funding only to meet certain necessary operational costs. We have worked on social change project funded by organisations such as MSD, Community Waikato/the Tindall Foundation, IHC, Te Pou, the Todd Foundation and private corporations.

We identify and train emerging leaders from within vulnerable communities. By envisioning their future positively and sustainably, they tap into their collective wisdom to grow as social innovators. Sharing their learning from within their communities they then power up a 'leadership pipeline'.

Our teamwork with stakeholders, officials and NGOs focuses on a common aim, viz. for participants to become change agents for their children, a proven way to enhance return on social investment, with quantifiable and measurable outcomes.

The FTI Trust is supported by the expertise of its Trustees and Advisory Board. Please click here to read more about our team.

Some details on this program's team

Dr. Annick Janson and Janine Morrah will oversee and run this program in the Eastern and Central area.

They have extensive combined experience in the program co-design methodology, in facilitation and in local connections and networks.

Dr. Annick Janson is an Associate at the Centre for Applied Cross-cultural Research, Victoria University of Wellington, past Research Director at the New Zealand Leadership Institute, University of Auckland Business School and Research Director, Microsoft NZ, Partners in Learning. She trained as a clinical and educational psychologist with special interest in families raising young children with disability or delays. She evaluates creative visioning methodologies to empower parents and professionals in forming effective partnerships to achieve progress for children with disability.

This novel visioning spurs transformative journeys to build capacity through participatory practices to formulate and achieve goals through follow-up implementation Train the Trainers programs – pipelines for peer leaders to model sector leadership. One example of this work is the Parent Professional Relationship Statement launched internationally by The Centre for Welfare Reform. Annick has 20 years of experience working in schools and is interested in facilitating schools embracing inclusion. The CitizenYou programme was developed in collaboration and with the support of Dr Simon Duffy developer of the Keys to Citizenship.

A Fellow in Positive Psychology from the Gallup International Positive Psychology Institute, Dr. Annick Janson is Co-Founder and Research Director of the Now and Next suite of programs for youth and families. Rolled out in New Zealand, Australia, Finland and Canada, this Research and Development program pioneers the implementation of Positive Psychology in the Health & Disability sector as an alternative to the traditional deficit-based medical model.

Janine Morrah: Being brought up in a sports oriented family, Janine naturally gravitated to playing hockey, soccer and rugby in her teenage years. As injuries started to take their toll, she started to look at coaching and manager roles in sports along with training as a Sports Medic. From there she studied to teach at tertiary level with Linguistics, human development, anthropology and management being her interests at university. After tutoring and lecturing for 20 years, she shifted into the Health and Disability sector where for three years now, she has been enjoying supporting family/whanau of those with needs.

Working with youth inspires Janine to do better and consider things from more than one point of view – There's more than one way to get to the same end point and she has found that the journey to get there has more meaning than that final goal attainment. “I find that I learn just as much from those keen enquiring minds as they do soaking up the knowledge I bring for them to take and shape in their worlds”.

In her area, Janine has contacts with the following organisations and people: Manawatu Chamber of Commerce; Local and regional councils: PNCC [Horizons, Feilding Regional Council, Horowhenua District Council]; MidCentral DHB: [Director of Innovation, Outpatients Governance group, CDS, Physio & OT services, Easie Living]; Massey University; Ucol; IPU; Ministry of Education, Tararua & Feilding RDA, Sport Manawatu, Manawatu Hockey, Parafed Manawatu, Wheelchair rugby, Halberg Trust, Just Zilch, Mana Whaikaha; Local businesses such as All sorts Café, ITS Training, WebForge Motors, A1 Wheelchairs, Higgins, Wallace Development, Watson Real Estate, Mortgage Connect, Property Brokers.

Our other programs:

Hillcrest High NZ pilotKeys2leadREAP2022 program citizenyouthprogram