ADL's positive impact on youth wellbeing

For over 30 years, ADL – formerly known as Adventure Development Limited – has been a driving force in bringing positive change to the lives of young people in the Central Lakes Trust region. ADL's commitment to adventure therapy, utilising outdoor activities to support young people facing various challenges, has been a cornerstone of its success.

“We believe outdoor activity has a powerfully positive impact”

 “We believe outdoor activity with groups of young people who are experiencing low mood, anxiety, impulsivity, substance misuse, or neurodiversity issues has a powerfully positive impact when used in a structured and carefully planned way,” says Clive McArthur, Chief Executive of ADL. “The need for our services has been steadily growing, with referrals into the Central Lakes Team increasing by 50% from 2019 to 2023.”

To meet this growing demand, the number of staff in the CLT region has grown significantly over the past few years, going from a team of three in 2018 to a dedicated team of 11 professionals today. ADL has recently invested in key roles, including a Journey and Activities Leader and Outdoor Activities Specialist, to further increase their capacity.

ADL's impact is truly transformative, underscored by the positive feedback received. A notable 89% of clients report a direct improvement in their wellbeing, attesting to the tangible positive change facilitated by ADL. Furthermore, an impressive 97% of whānau rate ADL’s services as good to excellent. This high praise highlights the organisation's effectiveness in making a meaningful and substantial difference in the lives of the youth and their broader support networks.

Central Lakes Trust supports ADL with operational funding to help sustain their services in the region.

We are incredibly grateful to the CLT for their donation, which is going straight towards supporting the operational costs of running the team in the region,” says Clive. “For example, we have experienced an increase in rental space costs of over 200% since 2021. The CLT donation will also support the Central Lakes Team’s increasing vehicle costs. ADL is committed to reducing barriers to young people throughout the region, and our team travels throughout the region daily.”

This high praise highlights the organisation's effectiveness in making a meaningful and substantial difference in the lives of the youth and their broader support networks.

ADL welcomes donations and support from the community to continue their important work. Currently, the organisation is fundraising for stand-up paddleboards and kayaks to expand its repertoire of activities. Clive McArthur encourages those interested in supporting ADL's mission to reach out to funding@adlnz.org.nz for more information

The ADL and Central Lakes Trust teams.

Headlight – making it easy to talk about mental health

While most people know how to look after their physical health, not many have the skills, knowledge, and confidence to support their mental health. This is where Headlight comes in.

Headlight's mission is to increase mental health literacy, a proven health promotion strategy for improving mental well-being. Traditionally, mental health education programs are limited to large workplaces or are on a user-pays basis, leaving diverse cultural and priority communities underserved.

In 2021, the team started developing and delivering mental health education to local priority communities through the GoodYarn Community Pilot Project. Seeing the value in this pilot project, Headlight was established in July 2022 to build the pilot project into a sustainable mental health education programme.

To date, Headlight has provided free or subsidised mental health education to nearly 500 community members, including migrants with English as a second language, parents, NGOs/volunteers, and small businesses.

Their unique community-led model has created a new way of making mental health education accessible and engaging and has established Headlight as a leader in community-based mental health literacy training. Headlight was recently recognised for their efforts, winning the “Excellence in Community Contribution Award” at the Queenstown Business Chamber of Commerce 2023 Awards.

“I have loved this journey of making mental health education accessible and effective for our local communities,” says Headlight Chief Executive, Anna Dorsey. “It started in response to a clear need to do more to fill the gaps for our migrant and other priority groups, who were facing increasing pressures on their mental health post-COVID and experiencing many barriers to accessing support. By responding to community need, we have been able to design a whole new way of supporting communities which is incredibly rewarding and has significant potential to help more people in future.”

““We know that education is empowering and knowing that we are empowering our people to be healthier, happier, more connected, and more supportive is its own reward””

Funding from Central Lakes Trust (CLT) gave Headlight a solid foundation to build the programme further.

“Our organisation needed to set up operational structures to manage our programme activity, such as finance systems, HR contracts and reporting and so having funds to ensure we could pay people to do both the operational roles and the project work has been vital to our success.”

CLT is proud to be supporting Headlight and the amazing work they are doing for mental health education.

Wānaka Community Workshop for NGOs/ community workers

JOURNEYS CHARITABLE TRUST

Journeys is an outdoor adventure programme offered to girls aged 12 - 18 to use the challenge of various activities in accessible local ‘wild’ areas to enhance wellbeing, resilience, self-worth and belief.

It delivers a weekly two hour adventure in groups of up to 10 (with two to three instructors) taking girls / young women on supervised walks and mountain bike trips into the local ‘wild’ areas surrounding Alexandra. The programme runs for 12 weeks culminating with a longer more challenging adventure.

CLT staff had the joy of adventuring with a group of kõhine from Journeys Central Otago to see first- hand what a great initiative the Trust supports.

On the group’s last outing for the season, we set out from the top of Little Valley Road walking (sometimes scrambling) down through the Matangi Station Mountain Bike Park’s trails of ‘Hazard County’ and ‘5th Amendment’ finishing up at the Shaky Bridge. Matangi Station kindly provided all the girls and instructors annual passes to access the land. You’ll see Journeys’ markers along the trails for their orienteering adventures.

They celebrated their last trip reflecting on their favourite adventure from the 12 weeks over pizza, each one of them having different highlights.

From the initial pilot in 2018 with seven participants, the programme has grown to cater to 60 girls a week exploring the trails around Alexandra, and was a joy to experience.

CITIZENS ADVICE BUREAU QUEENSTOWN (CABQ)

CABQ has been operating in Queenstown for 30 years. Central Lakes Trust has been supporting the bureau with operational grants since 2001.

In our 20/21 year CLT offered many of our long standing social service agencies that experienced increased demand due to Covid, the ability to submit a COVID-19 emergency funding application. In that same year we gave out 16 COVID-19 emergency grants, including to the bureau. This year overall COVID-19 emergency grants have reduced to five, the CABQ being one of them.

Due to the pandemic the demand on CABQ services increased substantially with much more complex enquiries ranging from employment and immigration to tenancy issues. CABQ was listed as a key local agency alongside the Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC), Happiness House, Salvation Army and Community Networks Wanaka as part of the QLDC emergency response to COVID-19.

CABQ fielded 4,500 enquires for the year ended June 2021, up on 4,270 the year prior. The total time spent with clients increased from 1,000 to 1,200 hours, an average of approximately 30 minutes per client.

Since the onset of Omicron, in early 2020, CABQ has struggled to offer its full service. Twenty volunteers are required a week and they currently have a pool of eight volunteers. With many volunteers being older people, they are not comfortable working in the office due to a real concern about catching COVID-19.

Due to this demand a COVID-19 emergency grant for 2022 was also granted. This is enabling CABQ to continue providing advice/distributing queries to key volunteers on issues such as specialty employment and tenancy queries along with the rights and responsibilities of the wage subsidy, actual and potential redundancies, tenancy rights and immigration visa enquiries while COVID-19 has been affecting our community.

THE KIWI KIT COMMUNITY TRUST

The Kiwi Kit Community Trust (Kiwi Kit) is a migrant and community reconnection programme in the Queenstown Lakes area.

Kiwi Kit is a relatively new trust operating since October 2020 and is focused on trying to address the disconnection of migrants in the Queenstown and Wanaka communities. The key purpose being to support and better connect migrants in our community to initiatives that will empower, educate, celebrate and provide a sense of belonging.

Their work has taken on increased importance in light of COVID-19 and the stresses that have been placed on the migrant community. This sector was not recognised for support in the COVID-19 response, many losing jobs and having a lack of security being on a working or holiday visa.

The group undertook the ‘Great Migrant Brainstorm’ in Wanaka and Queenstown to determine
the key issues and topics to look at from a migrant perspective.

From this they identified five key issues: disconnection from roots/ place of origin, disconnection from people and culture, disconnection from status, respect and dignity, disconnection from meaningful work and values, disconnection from sense of belonging.

They review this information three times a year, update changes and progress with the migrant community by reconnecting with a workshop.

Key work programme areas are telling the stories of migrants in the area, research and data collection about issues for the migrant community, presenting this information to community leaders, the public and social service agencies. Kiwi Kit is also creating migrant community sharing experiences such as safe welcoming spaces or events where migrants can join in on community activities, holding an ethnic festival and ethnic dinner and education evenings to explore / celebrate and introduce the various cultures of Queenstown. In partnership with Volunteer South the group run a community integration project

FOOD FOR LOVE

Food For Love prepares and distributes meals for those in need in the Upper Clutha area looking after nominees that find themselves in need of a little help. In our communities we see struggles with cancer, mental and physical illnesses, separation and divorce, injury, tragic events, poverty and domestic harm, as well as COVID-19 redundancies.

Food for Love provides home-cooked meals delivered free of charge to recipients for as long as needed. Often the recipients of these meals have no family support in the area.

The demand for Food for Love’s services has grown significantly since inception in 2016. An estimated 6,760 volunteer hours of work are donated annually from 186 volunteer cooks and bakers with 4,568 ‘client meals’ assisted in the past year. As a result in 2021 the organisation employed a coordinator to oversee the daily running of volunteers and nominations.

Community support for Food for Love has been strong and along with the in kind goods and services provided by a number of businesses and individuals, some capital items have also been donated including a chiller trailer (from the Rotary Club of Wanaka) and a delivery vehicle (from the Hugo Trust).