The I.Lead Conference is a platform for disabled youth from across New Zealand to come together to find solutions to prevalent issues and barriers they face as disabled youth living in New Zealand. It is also a space of collaboration and innovation, being a platform from which we can identify solutions to these issues, as well as giving the opportunity to have them presented to high-level policy and decision makers.

The first conference, back in September 2019, invited youth from across the country to discuss key issues in Parliament. This conference focused on identifying a broad range of barriers in 7 key topics: Housing, Sport and Recreation, Healthcare, Employment, Education, Transport and Media. From these 7 topics came 27 recommendations of which formed the basis of I.Lead’s work with central government that followed in the next few years.

Our second conference in 2022 was completely virtual – the FIRST virtual conference for disabled youth. This year, we focused on 6 topics – Education, Transition, Transport, Employment, Sport & Recreation and Housing. We then delivered 16 recommendations to government officials!

Our third conference in 2024 was back in-person. More than 40 young disabled people were invited to Wellington to attend the event. Our eight ‘hot topics’ for the 2024 conference were Education, Employment, Health, Transportation, Mental Health, Sport and Recreation, Housing, and Emergency/ Crisis Management. One of the conference guest’s feedback stated “I was so impressed by the energy and dedication in the room. There was so much strength, and so much vulnerability… I hope that leaders listen to our young people.”

To keep up the momentum from our 2024 conference, we decided to have a conference in 2025! 60 rangatahi whaikaha from across the motu meet up once again in Wellington. We looked at the recommendations from the previous year, analysed the changes that had been made since, and reformulated our recommendations for each key topic. Some recommendations were completely new, while others stayed the same.

Our 8 topics this year were Housing, Mental Health, Transport, Health, Education, Employment, Sport and Rec, and Arts. This year the I.Lead National Committee decided to try something new. Arts was added to the list of conference topics for the first time. Naomi Vailima, Auckland Committee Chair and National Committee member, says “Art is important to me because it’s a form of expression. Sometimes I’m not really good at using my words, so I use dance to tell my story. I feel like there is a lack of representation of disability in the arts world.” 31 total recommendations were presented at this conference, spread across the eight key areas.