Big Shout Out Southern Youth Development bike repairers

Southern Youth Development is a passionate supporter of empowering youngpeople, especially with mahi hapori that encourages sustainability and bettersystems for our environment. Our youth workers and volunteers support rakatahi tocollect bicycles from the landfill to restore, recycle and give them back out to peoplewho need them.Our volunteers are mentors who facilitate rakatahi to gain lifelong skills by learninghow to maintain and care for a bicycle. They teach everything through learning howto use tools, maintaining and understanding the mechanisms of a bicycle and thenencourage rakatahi to make connections with the community by gifting the bicyclesto people who need them. Our volunteers are often rakatahi who have gone throughthe programme themselves and want to share their knowledge.The Bikes@syd programme has been running since 2018 and our team of youthworkers and volunteers have supported rakatahi to recycle over 2000 bicycles in thistime. Recycled bicycles go to whānau in need, or those who need to use bicycles forcommuting, but anyone from the public can receive the bicycles and the sydvolunteers often have their own strong links in the community. Since the beginning ofthe programme, syd has been gifting bicycles to newly arrived former refugeewhānau in their first few weeks in Ōtepoti Dunedin. Both volunteers and rakatahigenerally maintain strong relationships with many of those who receive theirbicycles.Southern Youth Development is extremely grateful to all the volunteers who supportbikes@syd and all their youth programmes. Their expertise, so freely given, is animportant part of all the mahi we do for both our rakatahi and our hapori.