South Wairarapa Rebus Club
Those attending our last meeting were entertained and informed by Guest Speaker, Dale Williams ONZM JP, Deputy Mayor of Carterton and Chairman of the Youth 2 Work Wairarapa Team. Dale is a trade-certified motor cycle engineer and brings a personal trade- and business-oriented mindset to the provision of jobs for young people. His story is well told in the U-tube record of his TEDx talk, “Small town big change”.
After an apprenticeship as a motor cycle engineer, at 23, he built his early career in Otorohanga with a motorcycle dealership, which grew, over a period of almost 20 years, into a small chain of dealerships across the Waikato King Country, employing predominantly young people and training numbers of apprentices.
After three terms as a community counsellor, in 2004 he was elected mayor, a position he retained for 9 years. At that time, Otorohanga was a small town, population 2700, suffering from high unemployment, youth crime and vandalism. The ideas for a specific support strategy for youth came to him during his first crisis as mayor when two local teenagers took their own lives. In a subsequent public meeting young people told him: “Otorohanga sucks!” It was a place to get away from. … Continue Reading
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