Y Central Inc

YMCA aims to promote their youth mission within the New Zealand community and internationally. Their goals for youth of New Zealand are:

Youth Engagement – Actively engaging or involving young people into healthy mind, body and soul activities, through active recreation, education and community engagement.

Youth Development – Building, growing or improving young people’s internal assets, skills and abilities.

Youth Empowerment – Young people impact their communities in positive and intentional ways. As a YMCA network we deliberately design our programmes/activities/facilities as required by each community we work in. Young people are encouraged to move through the stages of engagement, development and empowerment with their communities.

The Y aims to to be a platform from which empowered young people can impact their community. The Y Associations can provide their space, networks, connection, mentorship and support to encourage young people to make this impact.

The Y will encourage and wherever possible enable Associations to create the supportive environment in which young people can feel empowered.

The Y is an Accredited Activity Provider of the Duke of Edinburgh Hillary Award.
They offer the Adventurous Journey, Adventurous Journey Training and the Gold Residential components of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Hillary Award.

They cater for school groups with customised camps and individual Duke of Ed participants during their “open journey” holiday programmes and weekends programmes.

The Gold Residential Project is an additional section at Gold level and is an opportunity to use many of the skills developed during the overall Award experience such and teamwork and leadership. This involves spending five consecutive days and four nights in a residential setting where you are working toward a common purpose. Participants have the opportunity to share a purposeful experience with people who are not their usual companions and work towards a common goal, set out by the participants themselves. Through the Gold Residential Project participants will meet new people, explore life in an unfamiliar environment, develop new skills and, hopefully, have a life changing experience.

Criteria for a Gold Residential Project:

  • You must be 16 years of age and registered for gold before starting any section at gold.
  • You must be away from home for a minimum of five days and four nights.
  • You need to be involved in 8 hours of purposeful activity each day.
  • You should be with people you don’t already know.

Y Outdoors are pleased to be able to offer Duke of Edinburgh participants the opportunity to complete their Gold Residential Project at Kaitoke Outdoor Education Centre.

Vision | Te Whāinga Matua

At the YMCA we hold to the fundamental purpose of the YMCA movement - founded in enabling young people to thrive and take their place in our community – our purpose is to ‘build strong kids, strong families, strong communities'. Put another way, we invest in the next generation. Education at YMCA creates new opportunity. Our philosophy is based on the understanding that education is about developing the whole person. We believe learning is socially constructed and that we learn from old and new experiences. We also learn from each other recognising the unique talents in each person. We value qualifications as a statement of competence and the opportunities qualifications open up for us.

Purpose | Te Koronga