Source: Head2Head
Bryan Bruce had the pleasure of talking with our Co-founders, Sir Graeme Dingle and Jo-anne Wilkinson, Lady Dingle, who founded the Graeme Dingle Foundation 30 years ago with the aim of improving the lives of young New Zealanders and helping them realise potential. The Foundation works with Aotearoa New Zealand’s tamariki and rangatahi at different life stages through schools and communities, delivering positive youth development programmes.
Bryan Bruce said, “One of the things that makes the Graeme Dingle Foundation special is its focus on being the fence at the top of the cliff, not the ambulance waiting at the bottom. They believe that prevention is better than cure, and their programmes are designed to empower youth to make positive choices and develop healthy habits early in life. While we talk about the work of the Foundation in this podcast, much of our conversation is about a rugged 1200 km journey Sir Graeme undertook with six violent offenders back in 1988, and Jo-anne and Graeme’s views on why military-style Boot camps are not the way to help young people develop the resilience they need to turn their lives around.”
Sir Graeme Dingle is a New Zealand outdoor adventurer and mountaineer. In 1968, Dingle and Murray Jones were the first to climb all six major European north faces and the Bonatti pillar, including Eiger and Matterhorn, in one season. He has achieved over 200 mountaineering and adventure firsts worldwide, including first ascents in the Himalayas, the Andes, and New Zealand. Dingle made the first traverse of the Himalayas, covering some 5000 km in 265 days. He has also completed a 28,000 km traverse of the Arctic, the first winter traverse of the Southern Alps in 100 days, and the first transit of the Northwest Passage by snow machine.
Listen to the Head2Head podcast interview with Sir Graeme and Jo-anne Wilkinson, Lady Dingle here.