Our Board

 

Chairperson: Ashleigh Smith

Secretary: Nikki Wheeler

Treasurer: Mark Tait (not pictured)

Board Members:  John Fenaughty, Tip Varnakomala, James Sutherland, Christine Lanham (not pictured), Karla Sanders

Our Co-Founder and Director

Karla Sanders founded Sticks ‘n Stones in 2013 alongside 30 passionate teenagers committed to empowering other young people to understanding the part we all play in stopping bullying.

A Primary trained teacher, Karla spent 8 years overseas in a number of roles from classroom teaching in West Sydney in an Islamic School to working with Local Authorities to integrate Education, Health, Social Care and community groups as part of Extended Schools legislation.

On her return to NZ in 2010, Karla took up a role as a Regional ICT PD Facilitator alongside teaching a One day School Gifted Programme.

Since 2013, Karla has been the adult that supports our young people and our vision to offer relevant, authentic and meaningful bullying prevention and response options so that young people see bullying as ‘not worth it’ and ‘something we don’t accept’.

The establishment of our Board in 2016 has taken her role from Part time Project Facilitator to a full time role as Director and we know she is incredibly excited about what the future holds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recruiting our Founding Members

At the start of 2013, Karla came to talk to assemblies of the five schools involved (Cromwell College, Dunstan High, Maniototo Area School, Mt Aspiring College and Roxburgh Area School) to ask for students who were interested. She wanted us to want to choose if we wanted to join or not of our own accord. The idea of the typical ‘good’ student being tapped on the shoulder by a teacher to join was not the way to get the most effective and diverse members. A lot of people that joined had been a victim or had seen bullying in their life and wanted to make a change. Some had even been bullies and this was good because we knew that they could bring a lot to the group with their experience and insight.

In some schools, it was easy to get students involved who wanted to make a change, in others it wasn’t so easy.

Standing up to make a change, caring enough to act is not always ‘cool’ and this is one of the attitudes that we think allows bullying to be accepted.  Some teachers and leadership teams are more supportive than others, valuing us and our commitment to the project and when this happens, we have been able to get things going much more quickly and easily.

We did not expect things to be easy and so though we still have a lot more to do to achieve the change we are aiming for, we are also celebrating every success and recognizing the importance of each step.

 

Hear Students talking about why they chose to be a part of the Project

 

Continued Involvement

 

Almost all of our founding students have continued to be involved with Sticks ‘n Stones every year.  As many of them will move on to University, Polytech and work we are now thinking about how they could continue to be involved once they have left school.

We have also recruited new members each year.  A key for us is to be flexible with our expectations as so many of our young people juggle sports, clubs, classes, work as well as their study commitments.  As our profile grows, more young people are keen to join us o make a real difference in their schools.  School Action groups have all worked out different ‘recruitment strategies’ from ‘If you are interested, Join us’ to completing an application form sharing why you would like to be part of the group.

In 2015 we are piloting a Year 8 Ambassador programme in TWO schools to prepare younger students for life online and to support them during their transition to Secondary School.

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