Share your story and help broaden horizons for young people.
Having a kōrero about your job, at a school near you, can be life-changing for tamariki in your community, and for you too.
What is Inspiring the Future?
Inspiring the Future connects schools with people from the world of work so tamariki can learn about different jobs.
Schools host Inspiring the Future events – inviting volunteer role models from their community to share their career journeys and stories.
Based on local and international research, Inspiring the Future is helping expand career aspirations and challenge the stereotypes that can limit young people’s potential.
How volunteering works
When you sign up as a role model for Inspiring the Future, you’ll be asked to complete an online profile. And because keeping our students safe is important, all our volunteers also need to complete a criminal record check.
Find out more about the criminal record check.
After this, your profile will become visible to schools on the website. Teachers can then invite you to in-person or online Inspiring the Future events. When you’re invited, you’ll receive an email asking you to respond. You can accept or decline invites as you wish.
How to sign up as an Inspiring the Future role model
Your time commitment
In-person Inspiring the Future events last two to four hours. You should also allow time to travel to and from the event, as well as up to an hour for preparation.
Online Inspiring the Future event times vary, but usually take around one hour. For these events, you can dial in from the comfort of your own home or workplace.
How events work
Once you sign up, you will get access to resources and guidance to help you prepare for events. You can access these when you sign into your account.
Events follow a set format:
- 20 questions/investigation session: Students ask questions to try and guess each role model’s job.
- The reveal: Each role model reveals their job, alongside a prop that represents it.
- Discussion groups: Students break into smaller groups to ask role models questions and learn more about their stories.
See the step-by-step guide to being a role model for an in-person event.
See the step-by-step guide to being a role model for an online event.
Watch an event
Meet some of our life-changers
Brony, Alicia, Harsh and Jessica share their experiences with Inspiring the Future.
Meet some of our other role model who have signed up to inspire young people.