Nelson’s Victory Boxing reaches out to people from all walks of life, but the heart of the organisation is its youth programme – and now that programme is in the spotlight in a brand new video from Skills Active Aotearoa.

“Our starting age is eight and we go right up to about 80 years of age,” says programme director Paul Hampton.

“We probably have 450 kids in our youth programme now. Our primary goal… is to see our young people feeling in a place where they can contribute to society, they have good feelings about themselves, and their self-esteem is strong.”

The Victory team also has special sessions for people with Parkinson’s disease, cancer survivors, victims of abuse, and a number of other groups, Paul says.

He says the Victory coaching team give their time and skills for free, so it’s important to Victory that they are provided with top-notch professional development.

Through an on-job qualification process with Skills Active, Victory has supported six of its skilled staff to complete the National Certificate in Recreation and Sport (Developing Coach) (Level 3).

“Our [coaches] are in the gym anyway doing the work - so it was just giving some structure to that through the training, giving lots of mentoring, and giving them an opportunity to ask questions and keep improving what they were doing,” says Paul.

For more on this learning victory, check out the video.

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On How Climate Change Threatens Cricket‘s Future

Well that didn’t last long, did it? Mere days after taking on what he called the “awesome responsibility” of being Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon has started blaming everyone else and complaining that he's inherited “economic vandalism on an unprecedented scale” - which is how most of us would describe his own coalition agreements, 100-Day Plan, and backdated $3 billion handout to landlords... More