Welcome to Syd!

Our rakatahi are important to us, and we work hard to tailor our youth programmes to where our young people want to go. We have started to focus much more on environmental and sustainability challenges with our youth programmes, and this reflects what is important to rakatahi themselves. In everything that we do, we shape our services to our rakatahi.

Southern Youth Development was chosen as a name that reflects our place in the whenua and our core reason for being. Whenua ties into so many of the programmes that we do with our rakatahi – wood for good, the orchard, the gardens and even our bicycle recycling programme. Our brand, website and uniforms will all be updated in the coming weeks and celebrate with us as part of our valued syd whānau.

You can call us SYD or Southern Youth Development – we’re okay with both! We hope you enjoy the journey with us as we move into the future as a new name, but with the same reliable and amazing programmes that have been supporting rakatahi for 35 years. We’re so pleased to be able to finally share this with you.