COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) notice

Statement, August 11th:

With Auckland moving to Alert Level 3 at noon on August 12th, the Howick Youth Council's Leadership Team is currently assessing the impact on our operations and the delivery of future projects.

Keep up-to-date with accurate and reliable health information through covid19.govt.nz

Stay safe and remember to follow the rules.

Our upcoming elections workshop, Pick Your Party, will be moving online but still be on at the same time this Thursday at 4:30pm — we'll be releasing details soon on how you can join.

Next week's Howick Youth Summit has also been tentatively postponed — attendees please monitor your emails for more information.

Follow us on Facebook or Instagram to keep up-to-date with our digital projects. Kia kaha Tāmaki Makaurau 🧡

Statement, March 21st:

Given the uncertainty regarding COVID-19 (novel coronavirus) in the past few weeks, the Howick Youth Council’s leadership team has been closely monitoring the situation and following guidelines set out by the Ministry of Health.

This has included providing hand sanitiser to members during meetings as per our Health and Wellbeing Policy, as well as also consulting with Auckland Council staff to closely follow self-quarantine standards initially set by the Ministry of Education in February.

Unfortunately, in light of rapidly evolving external conditions in the past few days, the leadership team has had to make the very difficult decision to postpone all in-person events and youth council meetings for the foreseeable future.

Most imminently, this has included the HYC-hosted Auckland Youth Voice Network (AYVN) in-person meet-up and the first project on our 2020 work programme: Jump The Jam Away.

This has been an incredibly difficult decision, but one that has been taken with the wellbeing of our members, the youth we represent, and everyone in our communities at the forefront.

However as a youth council, we do not intend to shut down and will continue to represent, develop and connect the tens of thousands of youth in East Auckland through these challenging times.

We will connect and empower youth digitally through our various social media channels on Instagram and Facebook and also continue to strongly advocate for youth voices to be heard on decisions being made in our local community.

This includes upcoming consultations like the Howick Local Board Plan, which will define our local community's progress into the next three years and beyond.

The youth council’s leadership team will continue to monitor the situation closely and keep our actions under continual review as official advice and external conditions evolve.

Statement, March 10th:

The Howick Youth Council's leadership team has been closely following developments around COVID-19 (novel coronavirus), especially those which concern local schools in the East Auckland area. This means following the expectations of health officials in combating the spreading of this virus. These expectations include guidelines around encouraging handwashing and providing hand sanitiser, as suggested by the New Zealand Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education, as well as recognition of self-quarantine standards. The youth council's leadership team also continues to follow HYC's internal Health and Wellbeing Policy, which states the youth council holds a duty of care for members during weekly meetings. Welfare numbers are available at all events and also to our members for our regularly-scheduled meetings. This is a rapidly evolving situation with a lot of uncertainty. The Howick Youth Council's initial actions above are based on what we currently know, but the youth council's leadership team will keep our actions under continual review as events progress and knowledge of the virus evolve.

We request all who are feeling unwell or are in any phase of a self-quarantine period to avoid youth council events.