About Us

Meet the team

Meet our head office team – they are the engine room of RYALT. Click on their image to learn more about these amazing people.

Richard Winch – Chairperson

Josephine Poland – Secretary and Manager

Vanessa Lang – Treasurer

Leia Senington – Trustee

Maria Millicent Reyes – Executive Assistant

Lillian Haskins – Community Coordinator

Kaye Healey – Student Coach Coordinator

Byambaa Hill – Accounts administrator

Hall of Fame


Mereana Te Pere

Past trustee

Vijay Satyanand

Past trustee

Barry O’Donnell

Past Treasurer

Sandy Malherbe

Past trustee

Pat Poland

Past Trustee

Jenny Butler

Advisor

Pat Hanning

Advisor

Peter Bright

Advisor

Our Volunteers

The Heart of RYALT

Volunteers are the bedrock of RYALT. Their dedication and passion make our work possible. Without our amazing volunteers, we simply wouldn’t exist. They are the driving force behind our mission to empower adults and teenagers through literacy.

The Rewards of Volunteering

Volunteering with RYALT is an incredibly rewarding experience. Our volunteers gain immense satisfaction from:

  • Making a real difference: By sharing their time and skills, volunteers directly impact learners’ lives, helping them achieve their literacy goals and build brighter futures.
  • Building meaningful connections: Volunteers form strong bonds with their students, creating supportive and encouraging learning partnerships.
  • Developing new skills: Volunteering provides opportunities to enhance coaching, communication, and interpersonal skills.
  • Gaining a sense of purpose: Volunteers find fulfillment in contributing to their community and being a part of an organisation making a positive impact on people’s lives.

Meet Our Volunteers

We invite you to learn more about some of the individuals who make our work possible. Read the inspiring stories of our volunteers and discover the diverse ways they contribute to our work. Click or tap on the images below to learn more. 

Saravana - IT and Web Support

Janet - RYALT Coach

Stephen - Salesforce Guru

portrait of soham, one of the amazing coaches at RYALT

Soham - RYALT Coach

portrait of soham, one of the amazing coaches at RYALT

Marianne - RYALT Coach

Hetty - RYALT Coach

Rory Dean - RYALT Ambassador

Matthew - IT Manager

Interested in joining our team?

Visit our Supporters Hub (click or tap here) to learn more about volunteer opportunities and how you can make a difference.

Our story

Did you know, an estimated 1 in 10 adults and teenagers struggle with literacy?

The Rural Youth and Adult Literacy Trust started at a kitchen table in Port Waikato. In 2011 Josephine Poland, one of the trustees, was asked by a local Port Waikato woman if she would help her with her literacy. Three months (and, in terms of her progress, the equivalent of 3 years of school) later, she surprised Jo by reading the instructions on some software they were about to try. Her comment was, ‘Yeah! I know! I read things now – because I CAN.’

Spurred on by this, Josephine, Vijay Satyanand and Richard Winch started the Trust (initially called the Adult Literacy Trust) in August of 2011, recognising the unmet need for daily literacy lessons for adults living in isolated rural areas was
not simply a local phenomenon, but a nationwide issue and, as such, needed a concerted, nationwide effort to address it.

To guide the development of the new organisation Jo became manager, prepared to fill this role in a voluntary capacity for the first few years (which she did from 2011 till 2015) and the Rural Youth and Adult Literacy Trust shifted from her kitchen table to an office in the garage. She was supported in this by a talented and very experienced advisory group: Peter Bright, Jenny Butler and Pat Hanning, all working on a voluntary basis.

The Trust has found video-conferencing methods a highly effective medium for teaching literacy. It is also fun for both tutors and learners. It is the only way we can train our volunteer coaches, who live all around NZ (two are even living overseas). However, we have also learned that mail and phone are often our best technologies.

With more and more students now having smartphones we are sometimes able to use those – the student can take a photo of their writing and the volunteer coach can share reading material by Zoom. Nonetheless most students cannot afford data and, because the Trust struggles to pay operating costs, it can only pay for student data when donations are received specifically for this.

In 2018 the Trust started working with teenagers, as an adult-literacy-prevention programme. In 2020 the decision was made to give working with teenagers much greater emphasis.