Youth Week is a nationwide celebration of events organised by young New Zealanders to honour the talents, passions, and achievements of Aotearoa’s youth.
This year Youth Week took place from the 7-15th of May. Locally, Whaingaroa held their event at Papahua on Saturday the 14th of May, a collaboration between Kotahi Rangatahi and Expression of YOUth, featuring an art installation, free food, prizes and live DJ’s.
At the start of 2020 Whaingaroa’s youth designed and built a Jamaican inspired speaker system as a part of an innovative Sound System Project. This has become a shared community resource used for various events such as Youth Week 2022. Our two young DJ’s, William Millward and Cuba Godward brought Youth Week alive pumping out some amazing tunes on the decks. Both DJ’s had recently had the opportunity to participate in a DJ course with Glen McIntosh aka “King Macka” and Emily Sandford-May aka “Jinja Cat” through Raglan Area School.
This event wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our generous sponsors so massive thank you to, Mike Rarere from the Community House for sponsorship and the DJ Decks, Naomi Tuaopepe, Brian Ruawai and Wairua, Bush for the incredible poster, Em for DJ support and Jay from the Wrong Skate Shop for prizes. Also, massive thanks to Matua Joe for his funding application and organisation with Matua Brenden.
Overall this was a successful community event and it was great to see young people out enjoying themselves and connecting after such a bumpy two years. There will be more Sound System events in the future!
by Cuba Godward, Raglan Area School
