Photos from 30 Years Celebration Event at Auckland Art Gallery Te Toi Tamaki

Great Potentials Foundation has just celebrated its 30th anniversary since its founding, with a function at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tamaki, attended by some 150 supporters. Founder, Dame Lesley Max addressed the attendees...

“We’re celebrating thirty years.  That’s unusual in the not-for-profit world. Why does Great Potentials Foundation exist? Because I could not stand the level of child abuse and neglect in our beautiful country… and because I abhorred the waste of human potential, through failure in education.”

“We set about addressing these two massive and inter-related problems.”

“A child is killed every five weeks in New Zealand, nearly always by a parent or partner of a parent.”

“80,000 young people are not in education, employment or training.“

“When I started researching these matters, over 30 years ago, New Zealand was ranked 17^th among developed nations on Unicef measures of child well-being. This year we were ranked 35^th. This is a disgrace.”

“At Great Potentials we don’t do head-shaking and hand-wringing - we act, on evidence….”

“I won’t enumerate all our achievements over these three decades, I’ll just highlight our three unique contributions to New Zealand: Family Service Centres, HIPPY and MATES…”

“Great Potentials Foundation works at key points of transition – to becoming nurturing parents; to entering primary school; entering secondary school and entering tertiary study.”

“We are effectively addressing poverty and inequality.”

“We see miracles.  The mother of six, who had three taken away from her because she was no mother, was able, through HIPPY, to prepare her youngest for a triumphant start in school.  The turning point was her revelation thanks to HIPPY that, in her words, “You’re supposed to talk to them!”

“We have the joy of seeing men whose lives have been blighted through gangs and prison, becoming responsible fathers.”

“We’ve seen a depressed, poor mother of ten being inspired by seeing her little boy graduate from HIPPY in a little mortar board and gown, and thinking, maybe I could graduate.  She gained a degree and became a head teacher in an early childhood centre.”

“We have the joy of knowing that our MATES mentees are graduate engineers, lawyers and Parliamentary officials.  We have two MATES mentors in our current Parliament…”

“We’ve shown how a modest neighbourhood family centre can help, heal and motivate.
We’ve shown how to release the power of low-income parents to enable their children to succeed at school.
We’ve shown how to release the altruism and energy of university students to help young people achieve.”

“Please help us maintain this success and to scale up to contribute even more to our beautiful Aotearoa New Zealand in the years ahead.”