Angel's Story: Making a Difference

When Angel was just a teenager she lacked confidence, being the youngest of eight siblings, with an undiagnosed hearing disability. Some family members were involved in gang life, and there was a lot of violence around her.

Because of her experiences growing up, Angel developed a passion for helping others and wanted to have a job working in the community, but that seemed out of reach. She struggled with learning and dropped out in Year 9 because of bullying. Angel was homeschooled for a while until she left for good at age 15, without gaining any qualifications.

Angel was invited to join the Community Leadership Programme (CLP) team as an intern in 2022. She began to develop new organisational and computer skills as well as tapping into her creativity and starting a cottage business, “Gifts Angelz”, making bespoke gift baskets. We secured business coaching for Angel, and her beautiful baskets were gaining in popularity but what she really wanted to do was work helping people.

Since Angel’s dream was to make a difference in the community, our CLP team worked to remove barriers for her, helping her get the right hearing aids and advocating for her to gain entry to a social work course at MIT.

We supported Angel during her studies, providing a laptop and quiet space in our offices for her to complete assignments. To give her some income, we also contracted her to cook fortnightly community meals (which she became famous for). Angel took the opportunity and ran with it, graduating at the top of her class.

“[The CLP team] made a huge impact on my learning, in the most positive way. I was able to learn the basics first which then led me to push harder in my studies to aim and achieve higher. With their support, I have gained the necessary Level 4 qualifications in social and community services, mental health and addiction support and received my NZ Certificate in NZQA Health and Wellbeing Level 4... It was such a challenging time for me, but having that support, I smashed it out with a big bang.”

After Angel graduated, she was offered a full-time position as service coordinator/team manager with an organisation in Manukau that offers residential support for mental health and disability clients.

“The tools I have learnt from my internship have taught me organisation & operational skills, team player skills, people values and discovering my creative talents and true worth, which I have implemented into my work environment... I have seen a huge change/impact from when I first started 6 months ago. Positive attitudes... and team collaboration within our staff which delights my heart to work alongside them. My faith and love towards them is well shown and recognised by all which has gained me favour and great respect. All praise to my LORD. I would love to acknowledge the beautiful team who have helped me get to where I currently am today. All the one-on-ones, awhi, support, behind-the-scenes followups and heartfelt trainings – I am truly very blessed to be a part of this.”