The Team
Back in 2018 Tina from Youth in Transition (YIT) & Josh from Coast Youth Community Trust (CYC) got together and dreamed about the idea of a mentoring project in our local community. Having worked in the youth space for many years on the Coast, it was obvious that something along these lines was needed desperately.
After much dreaming and scheming, Coast Mentoring was born at the start of 2020, as a collaboration between YIT & CYC. The program commenced as a pilot to ensure we learnt best how to meet the needs of our young people.
The pilot has been well received by our community with lots of community members stepping up as volunteer mentors to support our rangatahi to see them thrive. Upside Mentoring joined the party to provide their expertise and a support framework to help the program thrive.
After 2 years of our pilot journey together, we have learnt a lot. We have learnt just how keen our fellow coasties are to dig in and support our young people. We have learnt that this service is needed more than ever to see our young people grow into healthy adults. We have also learnt that the skills required of our mentors working with high risk young people, are very different to those working with low-medium risk young people.
As an outcome of the pilot programme and in order to best meet the range of needs of our young people , we have decided that Youth In Transition will retain responsibility for the support and mentoring of s higher risk young people, as part of their life changing ‘Journey Back To Awesome’ program while CYC Trust will continue working with Upside Mentoring to deliver the Coast Mentoring program for low to medium risk young people.
This configuration will mean each organisation is working in their area of skill and expertise while ensuring that the range of risk needs across the youth in our community will be well catered for.
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Its been an awesome journey where lots has been achieved together and, even though YIT & CYC won’t be officially working together under the Coast Mentoring banner , we look forward to ongoing collaboration as we support each other to increase our impact in serving young people and their families in Whangaparaoa.
CYC Trust is an independent charitable Trust established in 2006 to work with young people and their families on the Hibiscus Coast. Their mission is to provide direction, leadership, and hope to support and mentor young people, their caregivers and their families.
CYC's services are relational in nature, and encompass one on one mentoring and group programmes with youth workers. All CYC's initiatives are strengths based and designed to help young people and families establish effective relationships while developing resilience. Through these initiatives, CYC is able to continue strengthening youth, empowering families and building community.
Youth in Transition is a group of skilled, dedicated and passionate people committed to supporting any young person, their family and close friends, on that journey – for however long it may take.
The Trust’s core service involves a programme called the “Journey Back to Awesome” which is proving to be highly successful in addressing the needs of young people who are dealing with issues such as low self-esteem, anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation.
We are stoked to be partnering with Upside Youth Mentoring to deliver the programme to the Coast.
Upside has been matching young people with mentors since 2006 and with over 700 matches and 6000 hours of mentoring a year, they have seen time and time again the life-changing effects of thie mentoring connection.
Upside also partners with Springboard in Rodney and Tipu Skills for Life in Tauranga who deliver Upside's mentoring programme to their local communities.