● The boys who beat inequality

Terrance Wallace turned a terrifying experience into something positive, writes Lee Umbers.

Forced onto his knees at gunpoint in an alleyway in a carjacking incident, Terrance Wallace feared he was about to die. “I said to God in that moment — ‘if I survive this, I know that there is more for me to do in life.’

“I said that if God granted me life, I would live to make a difference in the life of young people.”

That vow would take Wallace, a youth worker in his home city of Chicago at the time, to New Zealand, where he would establish a unique initiative allowing dozens of Ma¯ ori and Pasifika students to attend two of this country’s most prestigious high schools and follow their dreams.

His journey and that of the young people whose lives he has enriched on both sides of the world is the subject of inspirational documentary In the Zone, about to be released at cinemas around the country.

The title references the InZone programme he founded in 2011, in which he established a kainga (hostel) inside the Auckland Grammar School zone for Ma¯ori and Pasifika secondary students who wanted to attend the college but lived out of zone.

The boys would not only have access to the educational opportunities and support offered at Auckland Grammar but also its influential alumni network.

A second kainga was set up in 2015 for girls to be able to attend Epsom Girls Grammar School.

InZone boys and girls have represented their schools in sports, been senior prefects and are forging careers in things like medicine and the arts.

“Tell them that they’re my heroes,” Wallace tells the Herald on Sunday on a phone call from from Chicago, where he has established InZone Illinois based on his New Zealand model.

“To get the [emails] and the text messages about some of their achievements, it brings me to tears.”

Wallace’s heritage is African American and Native American (Cherokee) on his mother’s side and African American and European on his father’s.

He was raised on the west side of Chicago by his single mum Liz, who sent her only child to schools 40km from their home to give him better

opportunities.

Gangs and violence had started to rear their heads in their community.

“It was not uncommon for me to hear gunshots,” Wallace says. “Bullets hit our house.”

Attending schools outside his area “gave me inspiration and ambition”.

“I think the world is so segregated and so divided on so many levels, but the earlier you engage young people in the diversities of life, the greater our future looks for us.

“Injustice falls down, I believe, when people can co-exist.”

Wallace was a youth worker in his 20s when he was the victim of the carjacking, the scene of which he revisits in In the Zone.

He says three young men, two of them armed, surprised him at a Chicago gas station.

“They made me drive in an alley and get on my knees and went in my pockets, took everything, and put the gun in my mouth . . . I just prayed.”

Wallace was pistol-whipped and left in the alley.

Felt he had been given a second

chance at life, he was determined to make the most of it.

In 2010 he was “in prayer” in his office when he decided to come to New Zealand.

“I looked at the globe, saw a littlebitty island . . . with a whole lot of water around it.

“From there I began planning. And four weeks later I was there.”

On landing in Auckland, Wallace says: “I thought it was a paradise.” But he was saddened when he saw a news item about Ma¯ori and Pasifika being under-represented in educational achievement.

“I thought, ‘I can do something to make a difference’.”

He joined the United Ma¯ori Mission, a Christian organisation and registered charitable trust, which began its life as the Presbyterian Ma¯ori Mission in the early 1900s.

Touring communities around the country, he became aware of media reports about differences in how children performed depending on what school zone they were in or their school’s decile rating.

While some schools in less privileged communities lacked resources, “it wasn’t that [they] were bad schools”.

It was more that a number of students were being challenged by circumstances in their communities or personal situations, he says. Teachers would then have to spend time dealing with “social service issues”.

Identifying Auckland Grammar as a top-performing school, he discovered zoning restrictions which favoured students living in a geographically defined area. Property there was sought after and priced correspondingly.

Wallace’s answer was to establish a boarding hostel in the zone and invite Ma¯ori and Pasifika boys to move into the in-zone home and attend Auckland Grammar.

He approached then-headmaster John Morris who was “very supportive of the idea”.

The mission allowed him to use their property on Lovelock Ave in Mt Eden and the first students were welcomed in 2011. They later moved to another property owned by Nga¯ti Wha¯tua on Owens Rd in Epsom.

Students live fulltime in the kainga and are given wraparound support, including access to tutor assistance.

Kainga are a wha¯nau environment, “a place where their dreams can survive”, says Wallace, who became the students’ legal guardian while he was in New Zealand. “We’re a family.”

In 2015 a real estate agent approached him after seeing a newspaper story about his desire to start a girls’ home, and they obtained a property with a lease-with-an-option-to-buy deal on Owens Rd. He approached Epsom Girls Grammar School and the home was started.

The girls then moved to the former boys’ kainga on Lovelock Rd.

There were 50 students in the boys’ kainga and 30 in the girls’ this year.

About 30 iwi and nine Pacific Island groups have been represented over the initiative’s eight years.

Auckland Grammar School headmaster Tim O’Connor says most InZone boys play sport and are active contributors to the wider life of the school.

“Although the InZone boarding house is a separate entity to Auckland Grammar School, we offer support in a variety of roles, including senior staff advisory, student tutor assistance for the evening prep, and use of school facilities outside of school time amongst other elements.”

Epsom Girls Grammar School principal Lorraine Pound says InZone students have joined the school community and fitted in well. “Many are involved in sport and arts and cultural activities, leadership and service... next year one of the three deputy head prefects is an InZone student.”