Community Involvement

Youthline is our main charitable beneficiary. We have enjoyed actively supporting its innovative programmes for the youth of New Zealand since 2004. We do this through our annual sponsorship, morning tea trolley runs and other fundraising activities. Specific initiatives our sponsorship has supported include:

• (TXT 0274youths): This is an innovative new SMS text message service for youths. The service provides support for young people using their own medium of choice - the cellphone. Over 200,000 texts are now received by the Youthline Crisis Team a year, averaging 4-5 times more contact than their phone line service.
• "Youth for Art" Project: This is a nationwide school art competition. It features a selection of art works capturing how relationships with friends, family/whanau and the community strengthen young people’s lives in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
• Youthline Cookbook: Funds raised from each $10 book sold went to the development of a Youthline centre on the North Shore.
• Youthline "Bun Run" Fundraiser (for community education programmes): Each year, Simpson Grierson holds a fundraiser morning tea for Youthline across all three offices. Staff donate a gold coin in return for a selection of baked goods.
• Youthline Changing Lives (with the re-launch of the "Urge/Whakamanawa" brand): Simpson Grierson was privileged to host the re-launch of the "Urge" online Youthline Brand. Urge/Whakamanawa is a website facility for today's youth, which allows them access to impartial information about all aspects of life - from the use of alcohol to relationships, family and employment issues.

Other community programmes we are involved with include:

• Orakei Reading Programme: We have a community partnership with Orakei School, where our staff participate in a reading programme with a number of the students. Our partnership is flourishing and the children at this low decile school are enjoying meeting with us on a regular basis. We also have a regular collection among our staff of clothes and toiletries for the school, as many of the children often go without. We donated new books to Orakei School, through Good Books, to enhance their reading material. We also support their digital learning programme (sponsored by Vodafone) which is a world first.
• YWCA Leading Women's Dinner: Each year we support a dinner held in support of the Future Leaders Programme. This mentoring programme aims to develop and support passionate young women to become leaders and role models in their communities. The firm has also had a presence on the YWCA Board for many years and we have staff who act as mentors in the Future Leaders Programme.
• Charity Collections: We regularly support charity collections, including Westpac Helicopter Trust, Guide Dog appeals, the SPCA and the City Mission.
• Emergency Relief: Our staff regularly contribute to emergency relief schemes by contributing money, clothing or household items to various causes including cyclone and tsunami relief work.
• North Harbour Rotary Charity Auction: We support this annual auction which raises funds for various community projects for the North Shore.