The Acorn Project Hawke’s Bay

The Acorn Project will provide support service for young people 12 - 24 years and their families living with cancer in Hawke's Bay.

Hawke's Bay

The Acorn Project Hawke’s Bay is a charity set up to provide a wrap around support service for young people 12-24 years and their family living with cancer in Hawke’s Bay.

We noticed a gap in the face to face support within the Hawke’s Bay community following the restructure of another organisation and decided that our young people and their families deserved to have local support on the ground when they need it.

The Acorn Project Hawke’s Bay provides individual programs of support that meets the needs of the individual member and their family, this is important as everyone’s circumstances and experiences are different.

Along with face to face Youth Worker support we also provide locally based monthly activities for our members to meet other people their age who are going through similar experiences. This encourages new friendships and peer support for our members, they can also take a break for the “cancer” for a few hours to have fun or learn a new skill that will support them in their future.

Parents and Carers have the opportunity to meet every second month to share their experiences with other parents / carers. Hearing helpful tips and ways of getting through from another person who “has been there” is incredibly empowering and valuable. They also have the chance to attend sessions facilitated by a range of professionals and agencies to make their experience easier to navigate.

The Acorn Project Hawke’s Bay is based in Hawke's Bay for the benefit of the Hawke’s Bay community.

More about us

We Support Young people aged 12 - 24 years and their family living with cancer in Hawkes Bay

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Its been a while...so much to share 23 May 2024

Hi everyone,

The Acorn Project is growing not only in the numbers of members we are supporting (45 individuals between Jan -mid may 24) but in the support we are offering and also the staff we have working hard, face to face, here locally in Hawke's Bay. With our increase in members this year alone we have just employed our third staff member to ensure we can provide our high level of support and individual service we pride ourselves on.

We have opened our support to children under the age of 12 with a parent/main carer diagnosed with cancer or who has passed away from cancer. They are called our Saplings and are supported separately from our older age group 12-25 yrs. We checked with other charities and organisations and nobody else was working with these children or intended to so we decided we would offer them tailored support that they needed and deserved too.

We are also running 16+ catch ups, we still have 2 camps each year for our 12-25yrs and a annual Sapling Sleepover too.

For our parents/ carers we are providing them with 1-1 support and guidance, we have a variety of parent/carer groups, which support their different needs too.

We have more ideas and plans but we need to secure more funding to do this.

All your donations are making this happen, and are helping us to grow our service and being able to continue to support our members under the age of 25 and their family living with cancer in Hawke's Bay and for that we are very grateful.

Kerrie - Founder and YW

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