Championing young people to promote safe and healthy relationships

We have partnered with Shine to equip young people with the tools they need to build communities free from family violence.

Family violence remains one of New Zealand’s most significant problems. Even though police respond to a family violence incident every four minutes, only 24% of family violence incidents are even reported to the police.

To break the cycle of family violence, it is essential we give young people the skills they need to build healthy relationships and become a generation that stands up against family violence.

Preventing family violence

We have joined forces with Shine, a Presbyterian Support Northern social service, to help expand its ‘Shine in School’ programme, initially into the Wellington region.

The Shine in School programme, which is currently only offered in Auckland, educates young people to become ‘champions of change’ by promoting safe and healthy relationships.

We have hired a Facilitator to work with Shine to expand its programme, and support our team to develop and deliver training and resources.

The new facilitator will encourage people, particularly young people, to have healthy relationships and build social and economic resilience, contributing to the prevention of family violence and economic harm.

Good Shepherd New Zealand’s Social Inclusion Manager Nicola Eccleton said:

“We’re really excited to partner with Shine on such an important project. If we are to make any real change to our appalling family violence statistics we need to support the next generation to have safe and healthy relationships, and feel confident to challenge behaviour that often leads to family violence.”

If you’d like to more information about the Shine in Schools programme or to enquire about having the programme at your school, please get in touch.