We hope you had a great festive season and have been enjoying the summer sun.   2018 has started with a hiss and a roar already!  So before we get too far into the year we thought we’d take a quick look back at 2017, and also let you know about some of the projects happening this year. 

Last year was our official kick off.  The year we moved from talking the talk into walking the walk.   In short we put some solid effort and progress behind our intention –  to work with our community so that together we could create some better outcomes for young people in West Auckland.

The Managed Moves programme for 13 to 16 year olds started, (2017 stats are summarised below), the YESS pilot for 16 to 24 year olds was launched, and the working group of various organisations and agencies dedicated to reducing synthetic drug use in our community got started.

Our collective has also grown.  We now have nearly 100 different organisations, agencies, funders, people and community groups involved or in touch.  We are both excited by the progress made in 2017 and appreciative of the openness to work together, and the great work of everyone involved.

YESS – Highlights

• 6 Young people
• 2 partner employers (Countdown and Mainfreight)
• 1 education partner (Unitec)
• Support from Youth Services West for the young people involved and Youth Connections helping inform the development of the programme through representation on the working group.

• Supporting the growth of the Managed Moves Programme and consolidating its move to a service provider;
• Expanding the YESS pilot, and establishing the social enterprise arm of the programme;
• Scoping a project that will look at the Youth Worker/Mentor role more closely.  We, like you, have recognised how important that role is for our more vulnerable young people and want to ensure its a role that is attractive for the right people and offers those pursuing that kind of career path the opportunities that it should.
• Further developing our evaluation of the initiative overall and each of the programmes.