SADD Newsletter Archive

As 2024 draws to a close, Kaitiaki o Ara/SADD reflects on a year marked by significant achievements and ongoing challenges in road safety across New Zealand. Sadly, youth are overrepresented in road trauma. We have witnessed many changes in the road safety promotion space this year, decreased funding, limited resources and reduced focus on road safety in schools. Now more than ever we need to be standing up and educating our communities about making safer choices on our roads. We remain committed to empowering rangatahi/youth to lead positive change.s

Quite honestly, the year has gone by so quickly, we have already arrived at our penultimate newsletter for 2024.

This month you will find treasures like “sharing the road with trucks” - an ever present topic at any time but even more so as summer and the holiday season approaches.

Also, the extremely important part of the SADD group life-cycle - “Passing the Torch”. Make sure your plans are in place to keep up momentum and leave a legacy for those who follow.

We're zooming through the year and are just about at the three-quarter point. This month isn’t just any ordinary month though - it’s September!

A very special month for all involved with Kaitiaki o Ara, we demonstrate just how important youth participation is as the lifeblood of our own campaign - SAFER September. Scroll down for a short catch-up and thank-you to those who got involved and sent their photos and stories our way. Details are still coming in and we also appreciate that phones are not as on-hand these days to capture those golden moments! Big thanks to those who did so!

August has been another busy month as we spring closer to summer (see what I did there)!

SAFER September is just about here and the Delivery team have been busy visiting schools and supporting SADD groups across the country with their awesome plans. Team Taranaki have been especially busy with preparations.

Ahhh, July, another amazing month for 2024. We tend to get swallowed up in the busyness of life around this time of year but never too consumed for road safety!

This July we had a big selection of applicants for our Rangatahi Hei Urungi programme to get through, an awesome problem to have I say! With that said a big BIG congratulations to all the new National and Regional leaders for 2024/25! Stay tuned for the new leader role announcement coming soon.

It has been another super productive month here at Kaitiaki o Ara with lots of workshops and activities taking place nationwide.

In this edition, we share some highlights from the month, including an awesome blog post that was written by a group of students at our Dunedin conference earlier this year. It’s definitely worth checking out and is a great one to share with your own school and/or groups.

May has been and gone before we even knew it. Here at Kaitiaki o Ara everything has been full steam ahead with the much-anticipated Road Safety Week coming around!

This month's edition is packed with excellent content that we are eager to share with you.

April has been a monumental month here at Kaitiaki o Ara, with our primary focus on our annual conferences in Dunedin, Wellington, and Auckland.

The calibre of content produced at these events has truly amazed us! The team felt incredibly humbled to spend time with such inspirational rangatahi, who are motivated to catalyze positive change in their communities. Read on to learn more about these remarkable events, the content they generated, and what lies ahead for the initiatives born from them.

And just like that we’re another month into 2024. Term 1 has been total madness at Kaitiaki o Ara. A good kind of madness?……maybe a great kind of goodness? Anyway…

In recent weeks, the delivery team travelled all over Aotearoa delivering Term 1 workshops. There must be something in the air because I’ve had a whole bunch of new schools reaching out this year too. Scroll down to see a selection of pics from our trips!

Welcome to the Kaitiaki o Ara/SADD newsletter - February edition! We have loads of great content in this month’s issue as well as some reminders and news on coming events that we would love to draw your attention to.

Our Delivery Team has hit the ground running and is currently delivering our Term 1 workshop series at many locations across the motu.

Happy New Year and welcome to 2024!

Hoping you all had a fantastic and safe holiday.

Sadly 20 people died on our roads over the Christmas & New Year period.

We had 343 people die on our roads in 2023, which was a reduction on 2022’s total of 374. We believe we can all make a difference and continue to see a reduction in the number of people who die and who are seriously injured.

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.

Welcome to our November newsletter! In this edition, we highlight the contribution our National Leaders and Regional Leaders make as well as our upcoming summer campaign - “Summer vibes, Safe rides”. We’ll be spreading positive road safety messages, holiday travel tips, and information on our social media platforms - all supported by our students and partners.

Kia ora koutou, welcome to our October newsletter!

We have well and truly hit the downward slide into the summer and the end of the year, and what a year it has been! We love this time of year at Kaitiaki o Ara as it gives us an opportunity to start reflecting on all of the amazing things that have been achieved and also put our heads together and start planning even bigger and better things for the year to come!

Kia ora koutou! September is always an action-packed month for Kaitiaki o Ara. Not only are students revving up for mock exams, we also saw rangatahi hitting the streets with a mission for safer roads in Aotearoa!📢

Alongside the SAFER September madness, we weave in other kaupapa such as Mahuru Māori celebrations and Motorcycle Awareness Month. 🏍️📣

Yay Spring is here!!! Bring on the warmer months, I say! In this edition, you will find out about up and coming events for September and numerous other amazing bits of info.

It’s a massive month for our Kaitiaki o Ara/SADD groups as SAFER September kicks off! I have no doubt there will be some fantastic road safety messages and activities delivered throughout New Zealand. Read on for ideas, inspiration, and the heads up on what the Delivery Team has been presented with on the road already.

Winter is already halfway through and time is passing quickly. It feels like Spring will arrive sooner than we anticipate but we continue to be incredibly busy planning for coming events and working with students.

In this edition, we show what Kaitiaki o Ara National Leaders did during the Winter term-break, when they gathered in Wellington to collaborate on a variety of initiatives and projects. You can read more about that event further on.

Kia ora, Talofa lava, Fakaalofa lahi atu, Malo e lelei, Kia orana, Bula Vinaka, Namaste, Lumela. Warm greetings to all our loyal readers!

This month, we fairly bustled with activity nationwide. We even made it over the ditch to our friends down under (though some may argue we are a little more down under here in Aotearoa)! In this edition, you can read the highlights from the Western Australia Youth Road Safety Summit that Donna and Vic attended.

It’s been another awesome month for us here at Kaitiaki o Ara. A busy April seemed to merge with a jam-packed May, but it’s exciting to have so many great things going on in the name of road safety.

This month we had some international connections going on with two of our young leaders connecting with SADD USA and Vic and Donna visiting Perth during Road Safety Week (more on that next month).

It’s hard to believe we are a third of the way through the year already! Our team is fresh out of our annual conference season and ready for the Term 2 action!

In this edition of our newsletter, you will see a wrap-up of our conferences, hear about some upcoming events such as Road Safety Week and our leadership opportunities.

Phew! By the time this edition hits your inbox, we will be a quarter of the way through the year. It seems like only yesterday I was writing 2023 for the first time!

So far this year we have formally shared our rebranding along with the introduction of our 4 Programme Aspirations, (that was a biggee!) and this month, the Delivery Team hit the road in a big way (scroll down for more on that!).

Here at Kaitiaki o Ara, we have been busy getting ready for Term 1 workshops, so by the time you read this they may have already started!

Workshops are an excellent way to get the year and your plans underway. They provide the building blocks for Kaitiaki o Ara/SADD rangatahi to understand what we are all about, how we do it and how to create meaningful activities that address important road safety issues in our communities.

Sadly, as 2022 came to a close, the Ministry of Transport's road count of people killed on New Zealand roads during the year reached a provisional figure of 378. That's 60 more than last year.

That increase is equivalent to an extra two classrooms full of people who were killed on our roads in the last twelve months.

2022 has been another challenging but productive year. I am always so impressed by all the amazing initiatives and events that our rangatahi/youth and partners have achieved to help improve road safety in their communities.

We started the year with the blessing for our new name - Kaitiaki o Ara, which was a privilege to be involved in and a great name to explain what we stand for - guardians of roads (pathways/journeys).

Wow Team!! What a month November has been. With our warmer months here don't forget to get involved in our summer campaign. You can read all about it below.

In this edition, we share the amazing mahi National Leader Haley and her Kaitiaki o Ara crew from Campion College have been doing. They have designed a great bumper sticker for our young people.

Tēnā koutou katoa!

Last month was jam-packed with so many fantastic road safety activities across Aotearoa! A big shout out to those of you who participated in making this September a SAFER September. It was amazing to see the fruits of all your hard work and effort.

Kia ora koutou Kaitiaki o Ara supporters, thanks for taking the time to take a quick peek at our August newsletter!

It has been a busy month for our delivery team and I have been on the road for the last two weeks visiting a great bunch of keen SADD students who are getting prepared for SAFER September which was a big focal point of our term 3 workshops.

Kia ora koutou. I hope you all had a great and safe July school holiday and are rearing to go for term 3! I can't believe we are already in the second half of the year. I completed my first lot of travel in term 2, which saw me in Northland and the Far North, doing a few workshops for keen students

Kia ora Koutou, when this issue hits your inbox, we will be halfway through 2022. Where does the time go? Things here at SADD/Kaitiaki o Ara have been busy. We didn't even see the time fly by.

Kia ora Koutou, welcome to our May Newsletter. Term two is well underway and it has been a busy start to the term for SADD/Kaitiaki o Ara.
We have two new staff on board, so firstly a big warm welcome to Steve and Bobbi our new Delivery Leads in the central and lower North Island. We are very happy to now have a delivery team of five, which means more support for rangatahi on the ground.

Welcome to our April newsletter. After a couple of long weekends, I hope everyone managed to get a little break. The start of Term 2 is upon us and the SADD/Kaitiaki o Ara team is gearing up for the upcoming workshops. Watch this space!

In my new role as the Project Coordinator, I get a good glimpse of what is going on behind the scenes.

Welcome to our March newsletter. A quarter of the way through 2022 already!
The end of Term 1 is approaching fast so it's a good time for us to look back at what has happened during this whirlwind of a time.

We are stoked with what we have achieved over the past few months. Covid may still be kicking around but we have found ways to adapt and prevail, delivering a fantastic series of regional workshops, both in person and online. Unfortunately some regions missed out this time round.

It might be the end of Summer but SADD’s year is hotting up.
Our warmest season is coming to an end and with it our summer campaign. Thanks to all who sent in a campaign message. Your contribution helped us showcase a great bunch of tips that resonate the whole year-round.

Happy New Year!

I hope you have all had a relaxing holiday and are ready to take on the challenge to reduce the number of people being killed or seriously injured on our roads across Aotearoa.

We entered 2021 hopeful we would be able to run our full programmes uninterrupted by lockdowns. Unfortunately, that was not to be! Like many organisations, we adapted and made new plans as we went along. Through all this, we moved on and continued to focus on our vision.

As you climb into your car, you pop your seatbelt on and check your rear-vision mirror. But wait! You spot something you didn’t expect to see. Yes, that’s right: it’s November, already behind you all done and dusted for another year. Pull over for a quick second, give yourself a congratulatory high five and take a moment to have a wee read of what the SADD crew have been up to.

Welcome to our October newsletter. Yes - we are early this month and there's a good reason for that. We have a long weekend coming up. We wanted this edition of our newsletter to be in your hands before Labour Day and around the same time as our media statement goes out. You'll find a little more on what we are saying as you scroll through this month's articles.

Welcome to our September newsletter and we have only two weeks left of Term 3! Time is flying by and we use every minute to continuously work towards our vision.

Despite the different alert levels our students keep promoting safer roads in Aotearoa. They are doing a fantastic job!