Introducing Youth Quest
Youth Quest: an exciting opportunity to spend time with supporting peers, encouraging young people to take action and thrive.
It is a 12 hour Social Connection programme for 16-21 year old, co-designed with youth to provide positive support in crafting their life vision.
Once registration is confirmed, you will get specific locations directions.
The programme engages you in your life planning - you will learn fun ways to plan and achieve the future that inspires you by coaching you to:
Identify your unique strengths and how they come into play in your life.
Co-design your planning to design a personal vision that inspires you.
Develop your vision into goals.
Unpack goals into smaller achievable steps to build your confidence in goal setting and goal achieving.
Young people seeking positive support and guidance in formulating a life vision.
Immigrant and former refugee background secondary school students.
Youth with ASD/neurodiversity, cognitive/learning disabilities and ADHD.
The programme has been piloted for youth with visual impairments.
Participants will:
Develop knowledge and experience about the visioning and planning process and its connection to wellbeing. The output is an inspirational vision board filled with goals. Participants prioritise one long-term goal for each category and learn to implement strategies to achieve them.
Unpack their goals from long to short-term, experiment completing them by taking small achievable steps by utilising our bespoke ‘Goal 2 Action’ tool and building capacity to take control of their own progress.
Have the option to explore simple, effective mindfulness techniques to support their overall wellbeing.
This graph shows increases (*) in participants' Empowerment, Hope, Wellbeing and Life Satisfaction. For more results click here.
(*) statistically significant
Scroll below for a description of the 4 levels of the game
Based on the research from University of Pennsylvania Prof. Martin Seligman who identified the different strengths that make each of us unique, participants get a chance to create their individual strength profile. They peel off (reusable) stickers from their base and put them on their backpack for their journey.
Participants look at the goal cards and choose the ones that they consider personal goals.
Participants place their goals on their Vision Board according to level of importance of the goal and a time-frame.
Participants prioritise two goals that they want to start working on. They can use this board or design their own to build confidence in goal setting. Reflecting about each chosen goal, they think about which of their strengths they can use to achieve it.
Participants can use our bespoke Goal to Action tool or design their own to unpack goals into small, achievable steps. The Signature strengths that they identify earlier go into the left column to start achieving their goals from a strength perspective.
Our co-design participants integrated Simon Duffy's Keys To Citizenship (more on this framework here) as a quick review process in the form of a 'goal passport'.
Participants learn about the different elements that make up a good life according to Simon Duffy's model. They get a chance to reflect on stories and think about specific examples that relate to their lives.
As participants work on their goals, they enter achievements in their Goal Passport. This ensures that they are well connected with the Keys to Citizenship model. They may decide to concentrate on specific keys at first. All achievements and world views are supported.
What participants learn is that there are several crucial areas that need to be considered and that they can choose goals in each at their own pace and keep tabs on areas of life that need addressing.
The process supports participants designing their personal outcome categories and measures.
Attendees plan their future goals and how to achieve them, by identifying:
The strengths they will use
The keys for their good life that they will focus on
The people who will support them to achieve their goals.
This map can be shared with those who can support progress in meaningful ways: family, friends, educators or support people.
Using the Journey map.MOVMaioha explains that the Journey Map helped her:
Putting her goals into a visual format
Recaping important parts of her future
Understanding how the Keys to a Good Life fit into the bigger picture
Sharing her Journey Map with her family
The Journey Map integrates the first 3 core elements of the programme and creates a coherent picture of the near future.
it is important to explain that this map describes the next few months, or steps to a transition (for example graduate from school) and that a new Journey Map can be drawn when a milestone is reached or a transition taken.
Action boards are magnetised and most participants choose to display them on their fridge so they can be reminded of their commitments.
Goals achieved are celebrated and new goals are formulated to keep the momentum going.
This programme was co-designed with youth. It was piloted in 2022-24, then funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Youth Development.
