It's a world-first online project, run out of west-Auckland.

"Reaching out for help in a moment of crisis can be hard, " says Andrew Sutherland.

Sutherland is the manager of Live for Tomorrow, a project of Zeal.

He says that to assume young people will do this when they need help is not a good fit for how our brains work at that age.

"At the same time, there's a constant stream of young people expressing this crisis online."

Live For Tomorrow, along with a team of more than 30 volunteers, takes help to those young people.

They respond in real-time and on the young person's terms, chatting through social media platforms.

They call this Online Crisis Intervention.

The programme uses algorithms to search for certain hashtags, like #depressed or #suicidal, which help locate young people in distress.

Its current focus is on Instagram.

"That's based off our research that shows that's where there's a concentration of this content being posted by young people," says Elliot Taylor, executive director of Online Crisis Intervention.

"These are young people wherever they are in the world… they're struggling, they're in pain and they're using this medium that is familiar to them, to be able to talk about that."

Taylor says there have many instances where the programme has saved lives.

In March, Online Crisis Intervention project won the ICT-enabled community programme award for leadership in harnessing technology for social good.

Vodafone NZ Foundation has given Zeal its largest charitable grant: $700,000

Where to get help:

• Lifeline: 0800 543 354 (24/7), Youthline: 0800 376 633 (24/7), text free to 234 (8am-midnight) or web chat (10am-10pm)
• Kidsline: 0800 54 37 54 (24/7; Kidsline Buddies available 4pm-9pm)
• Suicide Crisis Helpline: 0508 TAUTOKO / 0508 828 865 (24/7)
• What's Up: 0800 WHATSUP / 0800 942 8787 (1pm-10pm weekdays, 3pm-10pm weekends) or live chat (3pm-10pm)
• Healthline: 0800 611 116 (24/7)
• Samaritans: 0800 726 666 (24/7)
• Depression Helpline: 0800 111 757 or text free to 4202 (24/7)
• If you feel you or someone you know is at immediate risk, call 111.

Source

• zeal.nz
• zeal..nz
• newsroom.co.nz
• Image: zeal.nz

"I am a library, quiet but filled with knowledge - it's dumb [that I'm not asked]", was just one of the comments made in a survey of young people asking them about what they think of school.

These insights are contained in six reports prepared jointly by the Office of the Children's Commissioner and the New Zealand School Trustees Association.

Six key insights have been identified about how children and young people experience school, and what could be improved in the education system:

1. Understand me in my whole world
2. People at school are racist towards me
3. Relationships mean everything to me
4. Teach me the way I learn best
5. I need to be comfortable before I can learn
6. It's my life - let me have a say

An online survey and face-to-face interviews with children and young people were used to gather the data.

A diverse group of children and young people took part, some of whom would be termed "priority learners" by the Ministry of Education.

The project was designed to hear from children and young people about what was working well for them, and what could be improved in their educational experiences.

The New Zealand School Trustees Association and the Office of the Children's Commissioner have offered two strategic recommendations:

1. The Minister of Education considers appropriate systemic responses to the experiences of students highlighted in this report when issuing the Statement of National Education and Learning Priorities
2. The Ministry of Education engages with children and young people as part of the Statement of National Education and Learning Priorities consultation process and commits to including this engagement as an on-going element of the process in the future

Source

• occ.org.nz
• occ.org.nz
• Image: stuff.co.nz

The Lower Hutt school provided five intelligent and articulate senior boys aware of the push for a new flag.

It is a topic they said gets little discussion among students and their view is there are more important issues facing the nation. Continue reading

Dean is 26, and stressed by an economy that just does not add up for any but a tiny proportion of 20-somethings.

They have student loans to pay off.

Houses are beyond their reach.

They face low wages, high unemployment and a casualised labour market.

And they believe that when they get old, there will be no such thing as NZ Super.

All the basic building blocks of a prosperous, stable money life have been stripped from them by the political policies of the generation that was the last to benefit from free education, cheap housing, standard work contracts, and the certainty of NZ Super.

But for all its social media savvy, the 20-somethings are a generation that does not seem to have a voice.

It may have found one in Dean, whose Ruth, Roger and Me published by BWB Texts has just gone on sale.

It's the story of where the bleak moneyscape the twenty-somethings face came from.

It is also a personal journey in which Dean, who will present the book at the Wanaka Festival of Colour this weekend speaking alongside outspoken economist Shamubeel Eaqub, seeks to understand how the neo-liberal policies of Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson tore away the old economic certainties.

In their place have risen "disconnection" and "discomfort", Dean says.

His generation feels disconnected from society, and told that the discomfort of their stressful, competitive lives is necessary to have a competitive economy, though Dean doubts some of the assertions the young are asked to swallow.

Take student loans. They are celebrated as having opened up education to more people, but Dean writes: "A significant proportion of the growth in tertiary education over the last twenty years has come in areas that were once uncredentialised, or for which the skills were learnt on the job with the costs paid by the employer, rather than borne by the student-employee." Continue reading

• Rob Stock in Stuff

Rob Stock is a Fairfax Media reporter specialising in money matters and anything else he finds interesting.