Transcript
REBECCA KIDDLE - We were doing a project out in Porirua called 'Imagining Decolonised Cities' and that was really about getting young people in particular involved in decision making processes around city design and so Rick Steele from ChildFund Kiribati got in touch via some colleagues and came over and sort of observed one of the workshops we did with the young people and basically said, 'would you come and do something similar with the youth of Kiribati because we want to develop this youth development centre and we really want youth ideas to be at the heart of that design.'
SELA JANE HOPGOOD - So there's already a centre there, it just needs renovating or are we starting from scratch?
RK - Starting from scratch. One of the problems working with Betio, which is one of the most densely populated part of Kiribati in Tarawa and there are a number of young people that are leaving school without formal qualifications and they sort of get a little bit lost in the system, where those who have formal qualifications go on to do post graduate degrees and so on. Those who leave school without a formal qualification find it hard, so youth unemployment is a bit of an issue and ChildFund identified this gap really and wanted to respond to that in some way and so they were really keen and in fact they have already started working with a group of young men and women to do a sort of pre-vocational training programme, which they do in conjunction with the Kiribati Institute of Technology.
SJH - So this is like a bridge from high school to tertiary studies?
RK - Yeah exactly. These youth have not finished their high school education, so there's a little bit of a gap there. They can't go on to do undergraduate study, so what do they do? And so ChildFund is trying to think about how they respond to that gap.
SJH - What stage are we at in terms of construction?
RK - At the moment, working towards securing a site for the thing, so we worked off a particular site, but they are going to make sure that that's a particular site that is most appropriate to use and then we're working with a local architect and designer because they have a much better understanding of local costs and things like that and then there's a bit of money to raise to get enough building materials and things to build the building because as you might expect in Kiribati, lots of building materials, in fact most if not all, building materials have to be imported, so there's quite a cost that comes to that. ChildFund is going to be working over the next year to raise money for the building, alongside some existing funding they've already received from Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
SJH - The building of this new centre, will this mean job opportunities for people in Kiribati?
RK - So what we are actually hoping is the young people will build the building, so the design concept that our field architecture in Christchurch has created has been really worked off the idea that, wouldn't it be great if the young people themselves were building the building as well and so the actual structure of it has been done in such a way that that might be possible, with the support of technical people who understand the ins and outs of building.
