DECEMBER EDITION

What's new this month

2023 has been another amazing year for Kaitiaki o Ara/SADD. I am always impressed that every year our awesome students manage to do so many fantastic activities to raise awareness about road safety.

Sadly, there continues to be too many fatal and serious injury crashes on our roads, but together we can continue to raise awareness and help build a positive road safety culture.

Looking back, my highlights for 2023 were; seeing what great activities our awesome leaders developed; working with Western Australia Road Safety Commission to support their youth-led programme; visiting our SADD partners in Washington DC, USA; unveiling our rebrand and our 4 Programme Aspirations; launching our new interactive video - 'The After Party'; implementing our new Community Road Safety Programme to help support our vulnerable rangatahi; and finally, working with my amazing team to support our communities to deliver road safety activities across Aotearoa, New Zealand.

Sadly, we will be saying goodbye to Mia Dins, who joined us as the Programme Delivery Lead for Upper North Island in 2020 just before Covid hit. Mia did an amazing job keeping momentum going during those times. She then became our Project Lead and helped keep us on task for all the fantastic projects we had on the go. We will miss you, we wish you well in your future adventures.

We will also be saying goodbye to Jess Darnley our Youth Representative on the Board of Trustees. Thank you for your commitment and we wish you the very best for your future.

I am so proud of all our youth participants who stand up and help empower their peers to be safe on our roads. It's not an easy task but the more we work together the more we can achieve. I hope you all have
a happy and safe summer, and I'm looking forward to seeing what impact we can make in our communities in 2024.

— Donna Govorko, General Manager

Haere rā Jess - Kaitiaki o Ara Youth Representative

We are excited to bring you our annual highlights report for 2023.

In it, you will find examples of the incredible projects, events, and programmes that our student members, youth leaders, SADD team, and partners have achieved or contributed to this year.

The process of putting it together is also a massive act of organisational reflection. When viewed like this, it is quite humbling as to just how much has been achieved.

It has been a big year and we are very proud of everyone who has contributed. Happy reading!

Roly has been involved with road safety education since 1992 when he was appointed as one of Wellington's 3 Police Education Officers (now known as School Community Officers) which involved working with both primary and secondary schools.

In the 14 years he worked in this role he experienced the gradual transition of what worked best in road safety education. When he started, road safety was seen simply as skills and knowledge that could be taught to students but over time it changed to something done with students. These days, there is more emphasis on it being student-led.

Roly noticed that SADD was always at the forefront of this progression. So when he retired in 2021 as coordinator for all School Community Officers nationwide (NZ Police), he was invited to join the SADD Board to continue to support its role in student-led road safety.

In his spare time, Roly enjoys painting pictures of historical ships, planes, trains - and even of police cars!

We’ve reached the end of another amazing year and we have been stunned by the generosity of everyone who chose SADD as the recipient of their donation. We continue to be humbled by those who push the button to send funds our way and to those who point to SADD as an organisation that fits the bill.

This month we want to say a mammoth thank you to everyone who thought of us, sent us a donation (the size is not as important as making the commitment to make a difference) or suggested us during 2023. It really has been something!

This month, we want to say thank you to:

TL from Masterton, TQ, and PP down in Christchurch and RK all the way from Sydney.

As ever, we wish you safe travels but especially at this time of the year.

Ka kite anō.

Kerry Campbell (Upper North Island) email or call 022 319 6101
Renee Leabourn (Central North Island) email or call 027 239 6610
Bobbi Hutchinson (Lower North Island) email or call 021 761 649
Anne-Marie Robinson (Upper South Island) email or call 021 624 198
Mark Unwin (Lower South Island) email or call 027 451 1253