Celebrating Youth Week

Youth Week is a nationwide festival of events organised by young New Zealanders to celebrate the talents, passion and success of local young people.

Youth Week recognises the amazing contributions and achievements of young people in New Zealand. The week inspires us to value, support, and affirm the diversity of young people in our society.

Libraries Horowhenua wants Aotearoa to be a country where young people are vibrant, optimistic and supported. From Monday next week come on into the library and Youth Space and celebrate Youth Week. We have listed a few of the activities in our calendar this week. The theme this year is “Our voices matter, and we deserve to be heard!”

We want to encourage young people to take on challenges, share ideas and focus on the positive aspects of being young. In addition, we recruit young people to work in our libraries to make it an age diverse workplace where each generation brings different skills and talents to the environment. It also helps teens build practical job skills.

Horowhenua Libraries wants to be a welcoming place for young people. As well as our dedicated Youth Space, we have a teen area where young people can read, do their homework and socialise.

It’s also important to us to provide them with a collection which is relevant and diverse. Literature in general has historically shown a lack of diversity. This means that there has been a lack of books with the voice of an author or a character who is a person of colour, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, disabled, neurodiverse or anyone in society who is perceived as ‘different’ .There is a renewed awareness for the need for fiction to feature characters that truly represent our diverse communities. It’s amazing that in just a few years, the number of diverse books published has increased so substantially in young adult fiction.

Publishers, editors and readers are championing writers who are writing their own experiences. There is something quite astounding about people finally being able to speak for themselves.

Our non-fiction collection also meets the personal information needs of the age group. Our young people need opportunities to access such materials that support their personal interests, from learning about relationships to discovering options for their future career, education or personal growth. Adults are also not always secure in their understanding of the changes that take place in the transition from child to young adult so our libraries also provide resources to help with this.

When all of our public libraries are full of those who value young adults, not only does the library thrive but the community, of which young people are part of, thrives as well.