Every Duffy kid gets a book to call their own.

For David Liti, that was just the start.

Long before he was representing Aotearoa on the world stage as an Olympic weightlifter, David was a Duffy kid, receiving books through the same programme still reaching tamariki across the country today.

Dreaming big

For David, his story starts with believing something bigger was possible.

“I dreamt big and look at the places it’s taken me,” he says.

David was a Duffy kid learning English as a second language, and books were part of how he learned it. Reading gave him a way into the language, and with it, a way to start imagining what might be possible for him. That imagining has taken him a long way: representing New Zealand at a national level, and on to the Commonwealth and Olympic Games.

Why he reads

For David, reading is tied to something bigger than any one achievement. “Knowledge is key, and knowledge is wealth,” he says, a belief that’s stayed with him long after his own Duffy books were first put into his hands.

“I read because one day I want to be able to read bedtime stories to my kids,” he says. A generation of Duffy kids growing up to read to their own children is exactly how the cycle of booklessness is broken.

The Role Models who shaped him

David talks about the people who inspired him growing up, and what it meant to have someone worth looking up to.

“That made me feel good about wanting to be a better person,” he says.

It’s the same belief that anchors our Role Model programme today: give a kid someone to look up to and something to believe in and watch what they do with it.

What’s next

David’s own ambitions now look a lot like the ones once modelled for him. He’s spoken about wanting to create a space of his own, one where young people can walk in and see what’s possible for themselves.

“A space where kids can come in and dream big as well,” is how he describes it, a free gym where kids can train without cost and find the same belief in themselves that reading and sport once gave him.

It’s a vision that sits close to Duffy’s own mission: giving tamariki the tools, and the belief, to imagine a bigger future.

Watch David’s story