Local Folk – Gary Diprose

Springboard Community Works, based in Snells Beach, has proved so successful in turning around the most troubled of troubled youth that other community organisations around New Zealand are looking to emulate the Springboard model. This, even though the organisation’s founder, Gary Diprose, started with no training or experience in social work or any related field. He spoke to James Addis about how it happened …

I grew up on a farm in Matamata. As a young kid, I used to love being in the bush, trapping possums and catching wild deer. I learned every discipline of farming – milking cows, shearing sheep, erecting fences and moving stock.  My dad was a farmer and so was my grandad. My brothers, my cousins and my uncles were farmers. I was born to farm.

I left home at 19 and started out on my own share-milking with 130 cows – pursuing my dream of owning my own farm. But after few years I started to wonder.  If I was to die a farmer would I be satisfied that this was my lot on earth? I would have been about 24 or 25 and I had a young family. My wife, Michelle, felt the same – that there was a call on our lives that involved something more.

So I sold my cows, despite my grandfather giving me a pretty strong warning not to do so.  I had no idea what I was going to do, but the idea was to have a bit of time out to gather our thoughts.  All the neighbours heard I had sold, and I picked up some general farming work around the community – fencing and relief milking.  There was no logic to it. I had sold out of a very good way of life, and now I was earning minimum wage building somebody else’s fence.

Then in 2002 we got a phone call from Wrightsons. They said can you come and teach some kids some farming skills. It did not really grab me, but I went for the interview. Wrightsons had won a contract to provide an alternative education programme for troubled kids who had been kicked out of Mahurangi College and Rodney College. They were asking questions like, “What will you do if a kid turns up stoned?” And I had no idea. I was from a rural community, and my only social outlet had been church. Even so, I was offered the job. I remember walking along a beach thinking about it and in my heart struggling to accept it.  But then I came to a little creek and a thought came to me: ‘This is your River Jordan. This decision will take you out of your wilderness into the promised land.’

So, three weeks later I found myself standing in front of these kids. I had no teaching qualification, no counselling, no background in social work. These kids were smelling fear.  In my first week, someone set off both fire extinguishers, another kid started a fire. The whole class took off in our van while I was left standing in the classroom. On our first class outing, all the kids got stoned. For two months, it was chaos. I was coming home at 3.30 in the afternoon and collapsing into bed. I thought, ‘What have I done, there’s no way I can influence these kids.’

But then they started to tell me their stories. The first was a girl who said to me: “This is the corner my boyfriend died on. He went underneath a truck on a motorbike. It happened a month ago.” For a few seconds she opened up and then quickly closed back down again. But that sparked an idea. I started to look for this 20-second window. I did not know who was going to tell me. I did not know when it was going to happen, but I started to hear things during these 20-second windows. One said: “I’m going to go home tonight and my dad is going to smash me. My dad smashes me every week.” Another said: “My mission in life is to kill my dad. He beat up my mum when I was in the womb and broke both of her legs so I would be aborted.” Another said: “I saw my dad hanging in a tree. He committed suicide, and it was because of me.” I started to see these kids were carrying all this baggage. They weren’t wanting to get stoned because they wanted to be cool. They were acting out of feelings of betrayal or anger or rejection. When they got kicked out of school, it only fuelled their feelings that they were no good.
It made me realise everyone is screaming out to belong and everyone is screaming out to have friends and everyone is screaming out to believe, ‘Hey, I’m good at something’. I realized someone needed to stand with these kids – give them a place where they can have success; give them a place where they feel they belong and can master something.

I started to infuse these ideas into the farming course and started to see some breakthroughs. Wrightsons pulled out after 18 months, but I knew I wasn’t finished. We formed a trust under the auspices of the Vineyard Church in Snells Beach and that was the start of what ultimately became known as Springboard Community Works. I managed to get some funding and an ex-police officer, Lindsay Pahl, came to help me. Lindsay wanted to make a difference in a young person’s life – not just catch them, get them processed and lock them up.

For a time there, we were the Gary and Lindsay Show – the ex-farmer and the ex-cop. I would take the kids down to my dad’s farm. This was my Turangawaewae – a place of significance for me. They experienced the farming life, catching deer, hunting possums, docking lambs and gathering around a fire under the stars.  They thought they were Rambo. It was a great adventure for them. We showed them how one could live differently. That life was not simply about smoking dope and causing havoc.

The police took notice. They asked us to work with other youth offenders who had not necessarily been kicked out of school. By 2008, we were running three programmes: a mentoring programme, a youth offending programme and our alternative education programme. We’d help young people get off drugs, help them get their learner’s license, teach them budgeting and life skills, help them get their NCEA qualifications and mentor them into the workplace.

There are so many stories. We had one kid whose brother got run over on the road in Matakana. His Mum did not know how to deal with the grief.  Her children went AWOL and got into trouble. We said to the one who came to us, “Well wait a minute, it’s not because of your action, it’s because you all did not know how to handle your grief”. Now, he talks about how his life has turned around, how he has confronted his fears and the giant obstacles in his life. Today, he is a full-time builder.

But it’s not down to us. We call ourselves Springboard Community Works because it’s about tapping into the strengths which already exist within a community. We call on mentors, we call on teachers, businessmen and financial people to join us. People who are willing to own this problem. People who share the vision that no kid has gone too far, no kid too hardened to give up on.

The principal youth judge of New Zealand, judge Andrew Becroft, wrote to us saying whatever you are doing, keep it up – we need people like you in our community investing time into these young offenders. He added that five other judges, totally unprompted, spoke very highly of the work Springboard was doing in the local area.

I started out from a position of extreme fear. When I was walking along the beach that day I thought I was going to be stabbed or punched or robbed. But what I came to see were wounded children who wanted to be accepted and loved. When they found that acceptance and love, they changed. I’m pleased I got out of farming for that.