The Rotorua Community Youth Centre Trust is extremely excited to be able to bring Mates and Dates to the Bay of Plenty area.

Mates and Dates is a healthy relationships programme for secondary school students.

Mates & Dates is about helping young people to have healthy and happy relationships.

It isn’t just about dating. It’s about all kinds of relationships, including family and friends.

We want to teach young people how to:

  • identify unhealthy relationships
  • have healthy relationships based on respect, negotiation and  consent
  • identify inappropriate behaviour
  • get help if they, or someone they know, are in an unhealthy relationship
  • safely intervene in situations that could lead to harm.

We want to give young people the skills and knowledge to prevent the harm caused by sexual violence  and dating violence .

These are the relationship and behaviour skills they can carry with them throughout their lives

MATES & DATES PROGRAMME – FACILITATOR

A video about the program can be found here https://youtu.be/6AIlMWKhzNk 

WHY CHOOSE MATES & DATES

It’s a challenging time being a young person, and today’s media is full of stories highlighting the issue of sexual and dating violence among our young people
We want to teach young people:

  • what makes a relationship healthy or unhealthy
  • about relationships based on respect, negotiation and  consent
  • how to change behaviour
  • how to seek help
  • how to safely intervene when they need to.

Preventing sexual violence  and dating violence  is about more than identifying unhealthy relationships. It’s also about building on the strengths and skills young people already have.

‘Having Mates & Dates at your school will help students have healthier and happier relationships in and out of school’

SECONDARY SCHOOL PRINCIPAL

The number of young people reporting unwanted sexual contact or being made to do unwanted sexual things:

Mates & Dates has been well researched, so we know it’s safe and has positive impacts for young people

ACC fully fund Mates & Dates. It’s a multi-year programme taught in years 9-13 through five 50 minute sessions over about five weeks. It builds year on year and ties in with the learning area of health and physical education. It’s aimed at levels 4-8 of the New Zealand School Curriculum.

Schools decide if they want to register for Mates & Dates and then trained facilitators work with principals and teachers to look at the best time to deliver the programme for the school.

Students learn five core themes, repeated at each secondary school year:

  • healthy relationships
  • consent
  • identity, gender and sexuality
  • when things go wrong
  • keeping safe together.

Programme topics include:

It was really good to learn how to be in tricky situations and what to do if you need help. Also about when you can and can’t give consent, and if you should or not

STUDENT

If you would like Mates & Dates delivered in your school, please contact:

Steve Holmes

Youth Development Manager

Rotorua Youth Centre

07 343 1012