About ICONZ New Zealand

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ICONZ Adventure is a new 100% pure NZ Kiwi brand of children's after school or weekend programme for 8-11 year olds or year 5-6 at primary school. The Name ICONZ has Icons and NZ because it is our aim to develop each child into a Kiwi Icon using positive role models (Kiwi Icons) from families, churches and from within the local community. Our curriculum material builds on the heritage, culture and pride that are unique to our country. Through this we want to grow meaningful and positive relationships and boundaries for teaching under the (ALLS Fun) principles of Adventure, Leadership, Life Skills and Fun.

ICONZ Adventure is a subsidiary of The Boys' Brigade in New Zealand. Boys' Brigade is the oldest international interdenominational Christian organisation concerned with the positive development of young people in the world. BB first began in Scotland 120 years ago and spread to New Zealand three years later. Today the organization is represented in over 60 countries around the world, working with up to 750,000 children and young people. For more information on the Boys' Brigade in New Zealand, click here.

The ICONZ Adventure concept was initiated out of a need to re-position and re-brand the movement and to achieve positive numeric growth in the children, youth, churches and leaders engaged in the movement. We have a uniform which consists of a Black baseball cap which has the ICONZ logo, containing the anchor, associated with the Boys' Brigade movement since its birth in 1883, the Cross symbolising Christ who is the center of our lives, the silver fern, our national "flower" in addition to the black T-Shirt containing the logo and graphics which depict our adventurous nature.

ICONZ Adventure was developed to coincide with the 120th anniversary of its founding and motivated by the desire to reach into the areas of the community that traditionally are not catered for in the existing Boys' Brigade framework. ICONZ Adventure is designed to run in parallel to the existing BBNZ framework, having its own image and identity whilst retaining the key values and principles of Boys' Brigade. The primary objective is to train boys to become leaders and rolemodels of boys, then in turn to be leaders and rolemodels in the community. The needs of boys and young men are catered for using wide-ranging adventure based activities with awards that will allow the holistic development of the participants.

The ICONZ Story

Background

In June 2002 BBNZ Executive adopted a fresh vision and ministry plan to take the movement from 2002 through to 2005. The plan included discussion on re-branding and re-imaging the movement to each of our five stakeholders; the church, parents, children, potential leadership and the community. The intention of this was engage the services of a half-time "marketer" who would promote Boys' Brigade as a viable resource for children's and youth ministry back into the local church.

Executive asked that a subcommittee meet to discuss the wider issues of our promotional strategy, with a view to drafting up the terms of reference for such an employee. Resulting form this, Executive asked Tim Pratt (The National Director) to convene a committee, which would comprise of Ross McCarthy, Scott Billington, Richard Harkness and Clive Raharuhi. The Sub Committee met at the Surrey Motor Lodge in Auckland on the 9th and 10th of August 2002.

The meeting came to the following conclusions.
"Our proposal was essentially to launch a new parallel movement largely consisting of new units alongside the existing Brigade and to concentrate all of our promotional efforts, resources and funding into the establishment of this, a new body. The new body will encompass a new name, logo, uniform, series of slogans and promotional resources. Should current companies desire to trade under the new name and package they will be at liberty to do so, however this will never be imposed on them".

"The marketer will work in close cooperation with the promotions ministry team of National Executive. The National Director will convene this team of Executive. As well as this the marketer will also work in conjunction with an active "Company" that will enter into partnership with National Executive to pilot\experiment with the birthing of the new entity. The value of this is that we will be able to show churches in a tangible way the new model we are promoting... Due to this partnership between the marketer and a Company, it will be important that the Company and marketing person are domiciled in the same region".

Promotions Director Appointment

In February 2003 The Boys Brigade New Zealand Executive, employed Stewart (Stu) Thompson to the position of Promotions Director. Stu, a Diploma of Children's Ministries Graduate of Bethlehem Institute of Education, has over 20 years experience in many roles within Christian Children's ministry, children's entertainment, professional swim teaching, and holiday and after school care programmes. Stu and his wife Karen have three sons and two daughters from pre-school aged into their mid teens. Stu was appointed to the position in conjunction with Richard Harkness, the Captain of 5th Tauranga Boys Brigade who was appointed as the Promotions Manager for the year while Tim Pratt was overseas. Richard proved his worth providing inspirational strategic guidance and direction for Stu in the first year of the appointment.

Identity Development Process

Stu and Richard began 2003 with a new ministry to develop without a name, logo or even uniform. This identity development process began with a project brainstorm in December 2002 with a meeting in a small apartment in Ponsonby in Auckland. Other people present this meeting were Nathan Dunn, Carl Biel, Ross McCarthy and Adrienne Adern; they discussed possible names, clothing options and other ideas for the new image branch to the movement. Many possible names were discussed and eventually within weeks of the meeting, Stu decided that ICONZ Adventure would be the new name for the initiative. Even after the Ponsonby Brainstorm it took some time more before a logo and uniform were decided upon.

The Logo ideas were developed by Stu and Richard and sent off to Design Haus (now called Away Laughing) for formal design options, which were completed with discounted costs. Design Haus sent back over 20 proposals and eventually Stu took them to a kid's holiday programme and his children for expert critical analysis. The logo they eventually chose was the kids' clear favourite and it was the first choice of the project management pair as well. Stu had specific ideas on what he wanted as far as the uniform went, and the generalisations were also discussed at the Ponsonby brainstorm. by June the team had a completed logo and a baseball style cap with the finished T shirts completed not long afterwards. Black was a feature of the colours because they wanted a pure NZ flavour to the ICONZ Identity.

Programme Development

Initially Stu undertook about 3 months of research interviewing many children's ministry workers around the central region to find out what most people in The Church know today and that is this: Successful Children's Ministries depend on passionate committed leaders. He began trialing programmes at the pilot programme Richard had set up at the 5th Tauranga BB company and by the end of 2003 he had written and fully trailed the first of three years ICONZ Adventure Curriculum. Stu says that it was this part of the job he loved best because he achieved the highest grades during his studies at Bethlehem Institute in Curriculum Development papers and with the research projects. The end of 2004 would have completed the full 3-year curriculum programme.

New ICONZ Units

The first ICONZ unit to start outside 5th Tauranga was based at the Salt and Light Community Church in Papamoa, headed by Jeff Leigh. The historic day this new ministry started was March 19th 2004. By August 2004, three of the leaders have attended weekend training and the unit now has around 23 members and as many as seven very effective leaders headed up by Neil Robertson.

The ICONZ Brand has now begun to spread throughout the country, from its birthplace in Tauranga into the wider Bay of Plenty and dispersing out into the North Island. Currently there are eleven ICONZ Units operating, with several more confirmed to start in the near future. For more details on locations and contact details, check out the Locations page.