This year Te Aranui Youth Trust will be turning 25 years old.
This year Te Aranui Youth Trust will be turning 25 years old. We have taken on many different forms over the years and worked with many different people to support our local rangatahi who are most in need. We have also lived in a few different premises over the past 25 years but none of them have been quite as purpose-built as our new home, Youth Central.
Te Puna Taiohi or Youth Central, has given Te Aranui Youth Trust a new lease on life and the capacity to support more youth than ever. Within Te Aranui Youth Trust we work alongside the Ministry of Education and the New Zealand Police to guide local rangatahi down the right path to achieve their goals. Together we run a weekly breakfast club, Wāhine Toa and Tama Toa life skills programmes, and holiday programmes and we also do one-on-one mentoring. To facilitate our programmes, we have always been reliant on other organisations and their venues to host our programmes but moving into youth central has made us a lot more self-sufficient. We are now able to run our programmes out of our own building. Most importantly Youth Central has provided our rangatahi with a second home where they are welcome anytime.
What we love most about Youth Central is our relationship with the Bay of Plenty Youth Development Trust. Between all the different programmes operating in the building, we are now able to provide support to our rangatahi from the age of 7 up to 24 if they need it. This level of support is life-changing and has already been shown to benefit many of our Te Aranui Rangatahi. They are now part of the TBA, Aiga, and some of our older rangatahi are coming through IBA when they have aged out of our Te Aranui programmes.
We really appreciate being able to call Youth Central home alongside the Bay of Plenty Youth Development Trust. We are excited about our future here at Youth Central and look forward to being able to support rangatahi in need for another 25 years.
