SkillEx 2006 Regional Competition

Youth Skills New Zealand is a Trust dedicated to encouraging young people to excel in vocational skills. The organisation assists New Zealand youth by providing a model for excellence in industry training and setting goals for young people to aspire to in their personal development. It gives them confidence, assertiveness, a feeling of responsibility and the ability to seek new challenges within their work.

This is achieved through exposure to SkillEX competitions at a regional, national and ultimately international "Olympic" level. The purpose of Youth Skills New Zealand is to:

• Raise the standard of skills training
• Raise the self confidence and self esteem of the young competitors
• To have New Zealand recognised as one of the highest skilled nations in the world.

Through regional and national SkillEX competitions Youth Skills New Zealand can provide local companies, Polytechnics and other training institutions with performance benchmarks. This enables them to compare training standards around the country and internationally through participation in WorldSkills Competitions.

Eligible winners of the regional competitions will go through to the national competition on the 21 - 23 of September which is being held at WelTech.

Following the National SkillEX 2006 competition in September, an international team will be selected to a strict competitor and skill criteria to represent New Zealand at the WorldSkills competition in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan in November 2007.

The Southland-Otago competition was held on 1 April 2006 in Invercargill.

Take a look at the next pages to get an idea of what the competitors had to do through the competitions. View Photos