Mayoral Candidate Debate – Event Invitation

Nationwide exit polls in the last local elections in 2016 indicated 60% of people under the age of 25 did not vote. But, we also know building habits early is key to fostering life-long voters.

This is why we’re hosting a youth-led, youth-driven, and youth-focused mayoral candidates debate to connect to other young people. We’ve called it ‘Recruit Your Mayor’. We’ve modelled the event on a job interview format to shift the balance of power from the candidates to the people of Auckland — the future mayor’s bosses.

We think there’s a growing understanding of the impact of politics in everyday life among youth, and we think your students would be interested. Civics education isn’t always something schools get an opportunity to talk about very often. We’d like to work with you to help empower rangatahi in Auckland, and engage them in this local government election. To do this we’d love for you to share our event through your school, inform your senior students and share this out to your local community.

To keep things interesting, we’re harnessing interactive technology. We know it’s not always easy to speak up in political spaces often reserved for those over the age of 25. So, though a smartphone, people attending the debate are able to send questions via text and interact with candidates through live polling.

We’re covering topics from housing, the environment, transport, rates, to youth engagement.

We’re also planning to host satellite locations away from the central city to make the event as accessible as possible. Participants at these locations can still ask questions of the candidates and interact with them through their smartphones while watching a live broadcast of the debate.

We’d really appreciate if you could share this through your network so we can involved as many young people from across Auckland as possible. Also if you are a school that is based further out of the city and you would like us to host a satellite hub in your area, please reach out to us via reply to this email, so we can arrange that with you.

Event Details:

Time

September 14, 7:00-8:30pm. Mix and mingle until 9:00pm

Locations

Central (Main) – University of Auckland City Campus

(More details can be found on recruityourmayor.org.nz closer to the date)

East (Satellite) – Te Tuhi Arts Centre, Pakuranga

North and South (Satellite) – TBC

(More details can be found on recruityourmayor.org.nz closer to the date)

If you would like any more information, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

Recruit Your Mayor Team
Auckland Youth Councils