Winner Update: YMCA of South Canterbury

Hi. So yeah, I’m Olivia. I’m from the YMCA. I am our Youth Development Facilitator. First of all, I would like to acknowledge Timaru Mental Health Support, Timaru Riding for the Disabled, and HeartKids. I appreciate the nerves and all the work that goes into something when you’ve got to present to a big crowd like this. I’m a huge talker, and I absolutely love doing it. I remember that when I was standing before you guys last time, I was shitting my pants. I, at work that day, had my co-worker under her desk and I was just walking around pacing, doing my speech backwards and forwards because I was so nervous about that. So, yeah, good luck for this evening. Secondly I would like to give Impact a huge thank you. To have a club here in Timaru to support and recognize local organizations and charities is awesome. The Resiliency Toolkit is something that I am so proud to be a part of and I speak so passionately about. The Toolkit received no direct government funding so the money we received from Impact has gone back into investing in the next generation, putting approximately 220 local students through the program. This works out to be about $50 a student, who we’ll work with on an average of 7 and a half hours.So this is something that we do yearly, this is not just a once-off. This is something that we’ll be going with them, some from year seven right up to year 13. So they’ll see us, unfortunately some of them will see me, every year. So I think $50 for life skills that they develop, for the knowledge and the strategies that they gain, and for the confidence they build to bounce back from whatever life throws at them, I think that’s really priceless. So we would like to thank you guys for the support and helping us to build young people. So thank you very much for that.