Major Christina Tyson, the former head of New Zealand Salvation Army Media, has graciously given the green light to helping the Kiwi young writers to become their own entity – separate to Australia.
Christina Tyson was a foundation Panellist for the Kiwi young writers, a senior writer in the program which supports the younger writers and coordinated the 2014 Wellington Kiwi young writers conference.
The original link with the Kiwi young writer program was through the Australasian Religious Press Association (ARPA) when Christina Tyson as the Salvation Army Media representative met Press Service International's Dr Mark Tronson (Australian young writers) at the ARPA conferences.
When the Kiwi young writer program was being envisaged in 2011 to commence mid year 2012, Dr Mark Tronson wrote to each of the New Zealand ARPA member “Christian media” seeking their support to provide young people 18-30 years.
Christina Tyson as head of the Salvation Army Media Unit responded with a young writer and has has since over all these years recommended quite a number.
One of those was Wellington's Salvation Army young writer Rebecca Howan who received the 2019 NZ Basil Sellers Award. Rebecca Howan is also a member of the NZ Youth Choir and travels extensively with the troupe.
Patron
The role of this fresh undertaking as Patron, is to guide the Kiwi young writers to their own legal entity apart from the Australian young writer program.
2020 will be Kiwi young writer's ninth year and these young people have so many talents that to establish their own entity should follow.
Auckland young writer Rebecca Hoverd is a 3rd year law student and looking into the steps to become a NZ Society – like the Australian Associations Incorporation 'model rules' for local community groups to register – such as scouts and guides, sports clubs, chess and gaming clubs, including missions.
Christina Tyson has all their emails and is developing a hook-up process whereby a small group may be developed so as to move this forward. It is a Kiwi young writer ministry, not a Patron's ministry.
Moreover the Kiwi young writers have been assigned a one hour plenary to tell their story and into the future at the 2020 young writers conference on the Australian Gold Coast.
This too is on Christina's agenda for the Kiwi young writers to develop a plan for their plenary.
This is the Christina Tyson Story published in in Christian Today last month.
Blake Gardiner is from Auckland, sounds American, looks Swedish, but grew up in Laos. As an introvert, Blake lives life on the edge by socialising. When he isn’t putting his life at such risk, he enjoys reading theology and debating whether Interstellar is truly the greatest movie of all time.