Youth crime in New Zealand – a solution that can change the paradigm

Attention all teachers, police, policy makers and Politicians - The shocking crimes perpetrated by youth over the last month have shocked New Zealand but the electioneering speeches by Clark and Keys only reflects our anger and further alienates youth. We are being challenged as a nation to do something radically different – will we rise to it, or will we keep with the old authoritarian method and conjure up more punishment to deal with it without getting to the core of it.

The speeches by Clark and Keys have been said in the 80’s and 90’s and still nothing much has changed. They are reactionary and they are also violent. We live in a world saturated in violence from the real life tragedies of illegal war in the Middle East to illusionary wars and kill, kill, games in play station and Xbox. Our television and movie screens are filled with violence and if video stores were the supermarkets of our minds the question arises, what are we feeding our minds. We call all of this ‘entertainment’ and we wonder why our world and our youth are becoming more violent.

Change is possible, but not within the authoritarian paradigm, it’s this paradigm that we are being challenged to temper with something quite foreign to our policy makers – love and compassion – it’s a huge challenge and that is why this programme is called Challenge day.

Challenge day is a US phenomenon and since the violence ingratiating our TV, movies and games are majority American it seems natural to adopt it here to help our kids. Challenge day is a totally ‘new’ way of looking at youth violence and bullying in schools. It’s a radical departure on the old way of authoritarian violence and more punishment and its working because its getting to the core of the problem and changing it at the essential level. This is how they explain it

“Challenge Day is to provide youth and their communities with experiential workshops and programs that demonstrate the possibility of love and connection through the celebration of diversity, truth, and full expression”

If we are serious about our youth I challenge all of us to get this into New Zealand and into our schools and possibly prisons. Its time to change the paradigm – instead of parking more ambulances at the bottom of the cliff – lets build a fence and stop our kids from falling off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7gEDYPvf_M

The news tells us we have a problem in our schools with fighting and bullying – with challenge day it doesn’t have to be this way

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geX7vnu32Sc

Challenge day – we need it here – we owe it to our kids – send this to your MP, teachers and others who might be able to sponsor challenge day to come here and start up a program – its up to us, the authoritarian reactionary way of handling this has NOT changed anything – our prisons are over full our mental health is atrocious – we are a small country with HUGE problems and the old ways have NOT changed anything

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1278136665600416977