News
Bold Outdoors Partnership between Scouts Aotearoa and NZOIA
Media Release - 24 October 2024
Ensuring safety in the New Zealand outdoors with groups of rangatahi and tamariki is increasingly becoming a high priority for schools, community organisations, and commercial enterprises.
Enabling enriching and safe outdoors experiences is the NZ Outdoor Instructors Association (NZOIA) mission statement, and with those outcomes firmly in mind, Scouts Aotearoa have made bold plans to work in close partnership with NZOIA to bring that to reality for their 13,000 young Scouts.
NZOIA are the industry leaders in New Zealand for high quality outdoor qualifications and excellence in outdoor leadership. Scouts Aotearoa have 90 of their current Scout Leaders who are already on their way through an official training and qualification pathway with NZOIA to help provide great outdoors experiences for their Scouts. As part of their long-term plans, Scouts Aotearoa are working closely with NZOIA to increase this number and have as many of their Scout Leaders as possible being NZOIA qualified. The plan is to develop a pool of NZOIA instructors and Assessors within Scouts Aotearoa so that they can become self-sufficient in performing their own internal and moderated NZOIA qualification assessment processes, enabling them to develop a very large number of NZOIA qualified Scout Leaders.
Scouts Aotearoa Chief Executive, Chris Wilson, is excited about the positive potential of this direction and the positive benefits it can bring to Scouts Aotearoa, saying that “Scouts Aotearoa are all about positive youth development and empowering our young people to enjoy new adventures and experience the outdoors. It is critical for us to have the best possible outdoor leaders for this to be done in the best way, and most importantly, for it to be done as safely as possible. By having as many NZOIA qualified leaders as possible really helps us with that mission and it’s great to be working alongside NZOIA on that”.
Another at Scouts Aotearoa had this to say, “The NZOIA qualification framework enables Scouts Aotearoa the unique opportunity to deliver a personal development pathway for our Kaiārahi (adult volunteer) that extends beyond the Scouting environment. The ability to gain qualifications that individuals can use in their everyday lives as well as within the scouting environment – an opportunity especially relevant to our young Kaiārahi who have concluded their youth member journey.”
And, “NZOIA offers an exciting opportunity for Scouts Aotearoa to continue to deliver on our ‘adventure plus’ promise to young people.”
NZOIA Chief Executive, Peter Drew, was also very positive about these plans, stating that, “It’s so great to see an organisation like Scouts Aotearoa taking such a positive approach to its outdoor leadership strategies. Our beautiful New Zealand outdoors provide such a great opportunity for our NZ rangatahi and tamariki to achieve positive experiences for getting them physically active, and more importantly, for their positive personal development and well-being, and for their Whakawhanaungatanga and Manaakitanga. Scouts Aotearoa are really showing the way with regards their commitment to high quality outdoor leadership and we are delighted to work alongside them and support them with this”.
Both NZOIA and Scouts Aotearoa are supported by Sport NZ as leaders in the Active Recreation sector.