ABOUT US
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Mission
Our mission is to help the “At Risk” young people to turn around their lives and reach the true potential that each one has within them. To be “The fence at the top of the cliff that will stop the young people from falling off and needing an ambulance at the bottom”.
Objectives
1. To help disadvantaged youth build resilience and gain a positive attitude towards school/education enabling improved academic performance, gaining positive self-identity and becoming productive members of the community.
2. To break the intergenerational poverty of low educational achievement leading to a lack of career expectations and low self-esteem.
3. Build stronger community connections and access to needed resources and increasing unity between schools, whanau and support groups in the community.
Where We’ve Come From
New Foundations Trust (NFT) was established in 2008 following a number of serious crimes being committed by young people in Manurewa. As concerned community members with vast experience in alternative education, Youth Justice, Child Care and Protection, school chaplaincy, youth training and mentoring we banded together to form a trust with a plan to help. We saw that by the time young people ended up in alternative education, they were so badly damaged emotionally that only a few were ever able to be redeemed sufficiently to reach their full potential in life. From this insight we committed ourselves to be ‘a fence at the top of the cliff’ – making a difference when it’s most needed. We created a pilot program called “BRIDGE” (Building Respect Inspires Dreams Goals and Expectations) and offered it to James Cook High School. The outcomes were extremely positive. Since then we have continued to run this program in more local secondary schools, continuing to strengthen the content and approach.