Te Aranui Youth Trust
Te Aranui Youth Trust is a merger of three individual organisations of DARE Tauranga, Bluelight Tauranga and Te Aranui Trust together under one umbrella trust. These three organisations have a shared vision for young people and their families in the Western Bay of Plenty community.
So What Do Each of These Programmes Do
BLUELIGHT WBOP
Blue Light is a community based programme that involves police, young people their parents, schools and community volunteers. It is a community policing initiative, which provides entertainment, cultural, social and sporting events free from alcohol, drugs and violence for children and young people aged between 5-18 years.
Blue Light is a police youth programme designed to:
¨ reduce the incidence of young people becoming an offender or victim of crime.
¨ encourage better relations between the police, young people, their parents and the community.
¨ build self esteem and self confidence in young people.
Blue Lights objectives are entirely in keeping with the police mission of ‘Safer Communities Together.’ Blue Light aims to assist the Police to achieve its policing objectives by providing pro-active initiatives to meet a key target market. It does this by providing young people with positive lifestyle alternatives and strategies to avoid becoming an offender or victim of crime.
It promotes the police as offering an integrated, pro-active youth service which takes a holistic approach to helping young people gain self confidence and life skills.
WBOP Bluelight has an active operational committee made up of community and Police members that run a number of programmes in the community such as:
¨ Take a Kid Fishin
¨ PCT programme in schools
¨ Bay Steamers Community Engagement Programme
¨ Driver Education programme for youth Drink Drivers
¨ Bluelight Bangers in Schools
¨ Bluelight Drink Drive expo for WBOP colleges and high schools
to name a few. For further events log onto to www.bluelightwbop.org.nz
THE GREAT PATHWAYS YOUTH DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME
The Great Pathways youth development programme is committed to working with youth offenders, their families and the WBOP community to prevent crime and resolve other issues, which contribute to an unhealthy community. It's holistic wraparound approach focuses on preventing young persons from entering, re-entering or staying within the criminal justice system.
This is a hands on programme that is working very successfully and utilises programmes with in Bluelight and DARE for their clients. A key focus of working with the young person is the engagement or reengagement back into sport or hobbies.
A recent example of this was a family violence case involving a 13 year old boy who often assaulted his mother. Working with the boy and his mother he was introduced to judo and has subsequent gone on to win bronze at an Oceania event in Brisbane earlier this year and the bonus prize is that the family violence has stopped
The programme has 1 Youth Aid member and 2 youth workers seconded to them. This staffs are employed by Police and work closely with Police Youth Aid managing cases from Alternative Action contracts.
DARE
DARE's vision is " to give every young New Zealander the skills to reach their full
potential." They provide a range of programmes tailored to New Zealanders of all ages.
The programmes are designed to challenge children, parents and communities to develop
skills in DARE – Decision making, Assertiveness, Responsibility and Esteem to enable
them to make informed choices.
DARE programmes were originally developed in response to an increasing awareness
amongst schools, Police and the community of the need to protect young people from
drug misuse and the problems associated with that misuse. Informed, educated and well
supported young people can and will make healthy choices and decisions about their
lifestyle, but they must be educated in the first instance about “how" to make them.
The DARE community programmes DARE to Be you and DARE to Move on, are suited
for young people in early to mid adolescence, who are in need of help or guidance to
allow them to take control of their lives. These youths may lack social and interpersonal
skills, display poor anger management skills, be in trouble, have low self esteem, be
lacking in self discipline and performing poorly at school.
DARE to Support you Kids is a parent programme that aims to educate families about
the dangers associated with the use and misuse of common drugs.
These community programmes are the focus of DARE in the WBOP as opposed to the DARE programmes which are delivered into schools by Police Education officers through workbooks and fun days.