Success Stories
Ngā Angitūtanga
Who We've Helped
SociaLink has had the opportunity to work alongside many organisations in the Western Bay of Plenty, supporting them to get established, grow and achieve their goals. Read about how these incredible organisations are making a difference in our communities.
Featured Stories
Live For More has six long-term outcomes for the Tai Wātea programme for young men – to become free from drugs, crime, gangs, prison, positive mental health and in employment or training. They survey each boy in their surfing programme for troubled youth regularly and the data goes into Customer Relationship Management so they know what is working. The results have proved their programmes are working, which is helpful in getting funding – funders like to see results.
Alzheimer’s offers support groups, social groups, walking groups, activity groups and companion groups. They utilised many of the training and development opportunities that SociaLink provides from cultural training, and job-specific training for frontline staff, to leadership training for the General Manager. Job-specific training included social media management, family facilitation, cultural competency, and communication skills, as well as managers’ forums and networking events. Community Insights has also provided support through data and dashboarding. SociaLink’s training courses have provided opportunities for affordable skill development.
Merivale Community Centre is a central hub where the community can gather, feel safe, welcomed and develop new skills and connections. SociaLink helped the Merivale Community Centre recruit board members and develop a skills matrix so the existing board could see what skills were needed to make them most effective. SociaLink also supported the development of a Strategic Communications Plan after significant changes in the Community Centre to tell people what they were doing and provided guidance to plan and hold their AGM, as well as recruiting a new general manager and board members with the right skills for the future.
The Daily in Te Puke was started by a group of friends and has since become more than they
could ever have dreamed. SociaLink has been a huge part of that growth and ensuring the right structure is in place. For manager Chrissi Robinson, getting mentoring through SociaLink’s mentoring programme and the Mentoring Foundation programme taught her that she did have what it took to be a manager. They also utilised mentoring, attended governance workshops, communication and funding, received technology support through the Digital Technology Project, Organisational Support, Collaborative Facilitation in setting up COLAB, advocacy engagement through the Child Poverty Action Group, and general encouragement and advice from the whole team.
Māori mental health provider Rau O Te Huia Community Trust’s mission is to cultivate wellness and self-reliance in a kaupapa Māori environment. It wants its 10-plus staff to be qualified in the field they are already highly skilled in through personal experience with mental health issues. SociaLink has helped by providing digital training, assisting with successful ongoing funding applications, implementing a succession plan for the Board of Trustees and Trust, and mentoring for the manager.
There’s a place for everyone dealing with transgender issues at Gender Dynamix, based at Tauranga’s Historic Village. Its seven staff, five of them trans themselves, specialise in working with the most at-risk of the LGBTI+ community, working with all age groups and their families. They also work in schools and workplaces to grow their understanding of gender issues. Through SociaLink they offer Transgender 101 training, and staff have also completed SociaLink’s fundraising training. They work with 450 to 500 clients ranging from small children and their parents, to teens, and adults who are transitioning. They offer peer support, and therapy with a psychologist and also work with DHB mental health transgender services.
Tautoko Mai challenge is to attract good people and retain them in the challenging area of sexual harm. With the assistance from SociaLink, they’ve worked out how to do it. With around 800 clients a year throughout the Bay of Plenty, Eastern Bay and Waikato, they provide education and prevention programmes to thousands. SociaLink has supported their professional excellence and development which are a major part of the organisation’s ethics. The development of graduate roles for final-year social service students, providing them with smaller caseloads to develop their skills has been a huge success.
The Trust began working in a home-based neurodevelopmental therapy programme in a member’s lounge with community volunteers. They now have over 100 families and are still growing. They moved to the SocaiLink Managed co-working space, The Kollective, mainly because over the years they had accumulated enough paper to open a stationery shop! Now they’re based at The Kollective and paperless. They appreciate being part of a community and being able to network and tell their story, which has given them the confidence to grow. The Trust says The Kollective has given them the platform to grow to much more than they could have imagined.
The Salvation Army Tauranga Community Ministries has made the most of its connections with SociaLink’s training and mentoring. The Army’s purpose is to “care for people, transform lives and reform society” through social support – providing tangible welfare needs, social work and advocacy, financial mentoring, microfinance loans, parenting and personal development courses, counselling and transitional housing. Their manager has undertaken mentoring and completed the Great Managers course. The team has also attended the Cultural Induction at Huria Marae and used practical skills training for several of its staff in Communications and Excel, as well as attending networking events. They say training and development available at a manageable cost has greatly assisted them to flourish.
Waipu Hauora is the main health and social service provider for the Matapihi community supported by Poutiri Trust and The Bay of Plenty District Health Board. SociaLink’s Community Insights Lab helped Waipu Hauora’s health and wellness centre to make the most of the information it collects on its health clients. The challenges were understanding how well its programmes were working and any gaps. SociaLink’s support with a Community Health Needs Analysis, including data dashboarding of their own internal data, identifying regional and national datasets for benchmarking, identifying and mapping long-term outcomes meaningful to the community and developing measures and indicators.
Reviews Of Our Services
Read what some of the organisations we’ve worked with have to say about our team and services.
