Youth compete for $1500 worth of prizes at Zeal West

Over the month of May, we finished up our first intake of Gateway! In total, we had 4 Gateways running – Health Promotion, Art Design, Event Management and Audio Engineering.
On the 23rd May, we hosted a Youth Jam night. Young people from all over West Auckland performed, competing for $1500 worth of prizes. We had six performers audition, and took three of them audition and made it through into the finals. Chris Afoa and Liga Mo-Tofaeono were our judges. The day itself was a cool opportunity to have some live music in our space, and even some of our regulars got up and had a jam!
Versus Talent Quest ran on May 26th to end Youth Week 2018 on a high. We had 16 acts all from different high schools across West Auckland, and they were judged by our awesome panel of judges, Junior Soqeta, Chris Afoa and Tonez. There was a mixture of singers, dancers and bands.
I took a couple of youth to Wāhine Kakano Young Women’s Festival, and we had a mean time. Jacinda Ardern was the guest keynote speaker.

This month we farewell Matt. We are super sad. He will be finishing up with us in late June.


Read more from West:

Young people who need to be empowered, who need to be loved, valued and acknowledge as something that is of worth.


Thanks to The Trusts, Zeal West has received over $40,000 to go toward Zeal West venue costs and wages for our amazing youth workers.