On Monday, 15 October, the Graeme Dingle Foundation held its annual ‘Excellence Awards’. This awards evening recognises outstanding involvement across a variation of programmes that the foundation offers to young students all over New Zealand.

Here at Rutherford College, we are involved in the Stars Peer Mentoring programme where Year 12’s get the opportunity to mentor a Year 9 class through their first year of High School. It is an opportunity to develop leadership skills for us as mentors and offers a support system for Year 9’s if they have questions or issues making the jump from intermediate to high school.

This year, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to be a peer mentor and it was an incredible experience if only for that it allowed me to learn about myself and find out what a good leader looks like. I am honoured to say that I was awarded an award from the Graeme Dingle Foundation for an outstanding contribution from a peer mentor. This award represents not only myself, but all of the hard work and patience that the peer mentors of Rutherford College put into their classes this year.

I am very thankful for the experience I have had as a peer mentor and seeing the results from other programmes and hearing some very inspirational stories on Monday night was very special.