Last week, some of the team had the opportunity to attend the Porirua Careers Expo, an event organised to help the community of Porirua thrive through education and employment opportunities. The event was held at the Te Rauparaha Arena and was organized by a Community Led Project Team, which included individuals from various Porirua Workforce Partners.
The event was attended by students from local colleges, MSD clients, unemployed members of the community, as well as other Porirua residents interested in learning about new or different career and education pathways. The attendees were given a Porirua Careers Expo Passport to help them navigate their way around the Expo and find a career or education path that suited them.
The Expo was divided into different sectors or Whare, including Construction & Infrastructure, Health, Technology, Government, Education, Work Ready, and more. Each stall was creative and engaging, inspiring participants to a brighter future. The event was a great success, and we are grateful to have had the opportunity to attend.
One of the highlights of the day for our team (and many others) was an inspirational talk given by Paora Morrison. We are so very proud of him for sharing his journey so openly and would encourage you to watch the 15-minute video below.
Our approach to the day was to create a fun, welcoming environment for the kids who were attending so that we could find some time to chat with them about considering a career in the IT industry. With this in mind, one of our team created two games – SpaceTap and QuickClick – and we had a leaderboard running for each session where the fastest person won a Bluetooth Speaker.
The games proved so popular that we had to reduce the number of attempts per person to just one, so that we could get through the large number of kids who wanted to be involved. There was lots of energy on the stand all day and the Space Bar on the keyboard managed to survive, although some of the surrounding keys were not so lucky. The top score of the day was an incredible 816 taps per minute. Give it a go and see how many you can do.
We look forward to doing more events in the future and encourage you all to get involved in community events like this. Thanks to Porirua City Council for inviting us, to Partners Porirua for telling us about it, and to all the organisations who helped pull together such an important event.
