Graeme Dingle Foundation Waikato

The wellbeing of Aotearoa’s tamariki is at the heart of the Graeme Dingle Foundation. For 25 years the Foundation has been helping young New Zealanders find purpose and direction through our highly effective school based programmes across the country for young people aged 5-18 years old including Kiwi Can, Stars, Career Navigator, Project K, Kiwi Tahi and MYND.

We want every child to know that what they have inside is greater than any obstacle they might face.

Our proven programmes are sequenced to create a positive vehicle for change for young people aged 5 to 18 years old. We focus on the needs of children and youth in their communities. This is what we call The Transformational Journey - a journey that creates positive change.

Our programmes are currently delivered to over 27,000 young people in over 40 communities across New Zealand every year. Our vision is to ensure all young people are confident contributors to New Zealand life.

Our young people develop true self-confidence and real skills for later life through community-focused, positive learning and mentoring programmes. We empower them to find their purpose and direction in life.

Using fun and safe experiential learning through the great outdoors and inspirational classroom leaders and world-class mentors we help our young people keep on track, learn good values and set goals for the future.

We believe it is important that our programmes not only do good, but that we can also prove the difference we make by best-practice research. With our University research partners we know our programmes: improve attitudes and behaviour, improve academic results, help young people set and achieve their goals, boost self-confidence, reduce truancy rates and at risk behaviours such as substance abuse, and help young people feel more positive about the future. All our programmes are aligned with New Zealand’s school Curriculum.

The Foundation is committed to proving what we do works. Collaborating with universities, we have an internal research team dedicated to researching and evaluating the effectiveness of the work we do, so that we know what a difference we are making to young lives.