Students Are Our Future is a mentoring programme developed by Pasifika Medical Association as a response to the urgent need to increase the level and mix of Pacific health professionals participating in the New Zealand health sector workforce.

The programme aims to improve the completion rates for students in health science programmes through supporting students in reaching their career goals by targeting health workforce priority areas. These include medicine, nursing, dietetics, podiatry, speech language therapy, physiotherapy, occupational therapy and medical laboratory technology and midwifery.
The Students Are Our Future mentoring programme will:

– Support Pacific tertiary students to successfully navigate systems within tertiary institutions such as universities
– Provide adequate pastoral care and referral onto appropriate agencies where required
– Support students to manage a productive academic career
– Develop students understanding of the formal (and informal/implicit) values, rules and operating procedures in health sciences
– Develop a sustaining network of professional colleagues