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Our Vision
The Fast Track Inclusion (FTI) Trust envisions a society that acts to achieve lives of quality for all citizens. We inspire and inform social change by creating a passion and culture for inclusion and inequities reduction. We work with the community, government, and the private sector to secure justice, equality, and well-being of all citizens.
What We Do
FTI creates transformative, measurable outcomes for vulnerable children, youth and families through a peer coaching model. Everyday life results compound to grow emerging community leadership. The trust carries out social innovation applied research to accelerate social inclusion for marginalised people throughout New Zealand.
Our Story
The Fast Track Inclusion (FTI) Trust was launched in 2012 by a group of academics ,business people and community builders who work in social change. Trustees worked in a range of social and environmental project which created good value for society, however when funding ran out, these projects were typically shelved. The trustees wanted to extend the value that these projects could still produce by contributing their time and knowledge, beyond the projects' funding life. The FTI trust does mostly volunteer work as described on its website, applying for philanthropic funding only to meet certain necessary operational costs.
Our Approach
We work through a strength-based approach. We support families raising children with special needs and youth with special needs plan and achieve a future of hope and possibilities. By envisioning their future positively and sustainably, they tap into their collective wisdom to grow as social innovators. Our Coach and Be Coached model teachers them to share their learning from within their communities they then power up a “leadership pipeline”. Our teamwork with stakeholders, officials, community builders and NGOs focuses on a common aim, viz. for parents to become change agents for their children, a proven way to enhance return on social investment, with quantifiable and measurable outcomes.
Fast Track Inclusion fulfils its social innovation vision by carrying out targeted learning projects that are directly applicable to enriching the quality of everyday life of people and families coping with disability. the concept of inclusion is embraced by the disabled community who justifiably want to claim their place in their communities... but is our society matching this interest by opening its arms to embrace people with disabilities and mental illness? ... well errrrr... not yet. Fast Track Inclusion looked at the art world and asked: is mainstream art open to a diverse and inclusive membership? Quick hint: no.
Research has proven that community input is central to marginalised artists being able to contribute. Mainstream art practice options, however, are rarely available to people with communication or social challenges. This is our signal to create an integrative art space to provide this group with knowledge to explore and enter contribute to their communities whilst showcasing their talent.
Internationally New Zealand is behind with the lack of inclusion of disabled artists into mainstream creative opportunities. Research has demonstrated that our marginalised artists face significant barriers preventing them from accessing mainstream art opportunities. Currently Hamilton has a number of community art centres where marginalised artists can learn and exhibit together but there are few opportunities for them to access mainstream or able-bodied art activities.
Supporting disabled artists to access integrated creative environments with mainstream artists will in turn benefit all. This approach supports the New Zealand Disability Strategy Action Plan Objective 9 relating to the rights of disabled people to access mainstream opportunities.
The membership and supporting organisations of the community collective we belong to includes national organisations operating in the arts and community sectors, local disability and mental health organisations, community and business representatives, the Hamilton City Council, local members and organisations from the arts community. The leadership group that drives this initiative is composed of 40 people from the above organisations as well as local community artists, art therapy practitioners, disabled artists and community representatives.
The Fast Track Inclusion Trust principal mission is to establish a learning organisation and learning community to assist in public and formal education regarding a sustainable future for New Zealand communities.
The collective experiences of our Trust Members includes the collection, analysis and dissemination of peer-knowledge in the form of media resources. Outcomes from our research will form the foundations of learning (such as peer-learning) programmes to establish and coordinate programmes to promote the value of a sustainable future.
One way to strengthen communities is to facilitate the study of the success factors behind social entreprises and their benefits to their members.
Hence, our research will study ways to promote and encourage sound social, cultural and economic policies in New Zealand through the application of social innovation. Our topics of study will include the protection and conservation of our social and natural environments and promote the development and widespread dissemination of knowledge and ideas in these domains.
Our work will be done in respect with our multicultural society such as Maori and Pacific cultural perspectives. For instance, we will encourage emerging leader to share knowledge, collective wisdom, ideas and experience with their communities, in particular via engagement with marginalised New Zealanders.
We have worked on social change project funded by organisations such as MSD, Community Waikato, IHC, Te Pou, the Todd Foundation, and private corporations.
The Trust seeks to educate and empower people that are marginalised with skills to learn how to integrate into society. This new paradigm paves the way to a powerful experience of learning, creative thinking and dynamic reshaping of diversity in any context, including but not limited to gender, ethnicity, sexuality and disability. Built into the dialogue are themes of influence, conflict resolution and vital behaviours for individual and social change. The Trust will achieve its objectives through research and development of storytelling methodologies and educational programmes, and test online delivery models to ensure participation also from people who are geographically isolated. The research will investigate the causes and reasons for social, cultural, environmental and economic problems and suggest and promote tangible, novel paradigms and practical online solutions to these problems that are innovative, desirable and easily accessible to local communities. The Trust was established in 2013 to: (i) be beneficial to the community by relieving charitable need for social inclusion in our communities, and (ii) advance education for the public benefit.
Fast Track Inclusion (FTI) Trust exists to accelerate social inclusion for marginalised people throughout Aotearoa New Zealand, carrying out social innovation applied research that creates transformative, measurable outcomes for vulnerable children, youth and families.
We create this change through our distinctive approach: growing peer connections into peer collaboration that sustains a movement, using positive psychology's tools of strengths and coaching experiences. The Trust identifies and supports emerging change agents from within vulnerable communities. By envisioning their future positively and sustainably, they tap into their collective wisdom to grow as social innovators, sharing their learning within their communities to sustain a movement of peer-led change.
Our teamwork with stakeholders, officials and NGOs focuses on a common aim, viz. for parents to become change agents for their children and youth to become change agents in their own lives - proven ways to enhance return on social investment, with quantifiable and measurable outcomes. These include goal achievement, an increase in wellbeing, empowerment, engagement and hope.
FTI publishes outputs of their activities together with a research group. We pool our results with our colleagues and partners who facilitate the same programmes and publish a Global Benchmark Report regularly. Our reports and publications can be viewed on our website (www.ftitrust.org). Output measures are collected before, during and after programmes so they can be traced back to activities participants do during workshops. As detailed in our publication list, we use robust tools and statistical analyses to report on impact.
During FY26, the Fast Track Inclusion (FTI) Trust achieved the following, organised by theme:
Professional recognition and collaboration: Presented our work at the 2025 New Zealand Psychological Society. The audience received it extremely well, and the event generated important new professional collaborations.
Peer collaboration and facilitation: Grew peer collaboration within our communities by training more volunteers and facilitators in new facilitation skills. One example is facilitating a Youth Quest workshop for blind and low vision students in collaboration with BLENNZ – so successful that BLENNZ has organised for another group to undergo this neuroaffirming event, discovering and harnessing their strengths to create an inspiring future and learn to unpack goals to achieve them.
Recognition of our coaching methodology: Our distinctive “Coach and Be Coached” (CBC) model, grounded in positive psychology’s use of strengths and coaching experiences to grow peer connections into peer collaboration that sustains a movement, has been accepted for publication in a special edition of the International Journal of Positive Behavioural Support (IJPBS), as a yearly special issue of the Tizard Learning Disability Review – independent, peer-reviewed recognition that this approach is a genuine contribution to the disability and inclusion sector's evidence base.
Growing external validation: Our approach is attracting independent scrutiny beyond New Zealand: our Australian colleagues have launched a Randomised Control Trial (RCT) to systematise the impact of our programmes. The trial is ongoing and results are not yet available, but its existence is itself an early sign of the credibility our peer-collaboration model is building internationally.
Participant feedback (MYD): Following delivery of the Youth Quest programme under the Ministry of Youth Development's (MYD) Ākonga Youth Development Community Fund, MYD's independent survey of 93 participants found strong results across every domain: the majority of our participants reported feeling greater clarity about their future direction, making new friends, learning or improving skills. 86.8% were happy or very happy with the programme overall, rising to 95.6% when rating satisfaction with how programme facilitators connected with them. MYD's findings affirm that Youth Quest, delivered through our Coach and Be Coached® model, is achieving its intended developmental and community outcomes.
Across these programmes, attendees formulate an inspiring individual and collective vision for a good life, engaging in discussion that leaves them feeling less alone and inspires bigger dreams. They achieve their goals by learning to unpack them into small, achievable steps through targeted strength-based tools that go beyond SMART goals, discovering and harnessing their own strengths to create an inspiring future. Community impact follows in turn: emerging change agents, together with newly trained facilitators and volunteers, collaborate as peers to catalyse integration in their communities, sustaining a movement for genuine community change and growing a considerate, understanding community ecosystem.
These achievements reflect FTI's continued support from government and philanthropic funding relationships, sustaining our ongoing work.