CONGRATULATIONS to the winners of our fundraising raffle!!!

1st prize: LEIGHANN FORREST has won a sea kayaking adventure for herself and 7 friends.

2nd prize: BRIAN KNOWLES has won some awesome outdoor gear (a tent, sleeping bag, backpack) donated by Torpedo 7 and Macpac.

3rd prize: SIMON SCOLTOCK has won a Macpack backpack

Thank you to everyone that supported us by buying raffle tickets, and to those who attended the opening tonight, it was a fantastic event!!!

We raised almost $6000 and that money will go towards renovating our new building. Read more about the building renovations and fundraising here: www.adventurespecialties.co.nz/christchurch-hq-fundraiser

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Opening ceremony is underway, come on over! 71 Bamford Street, Woolston, Christchurch. Official blessing coming up soon, followed by the raffle draw. Good luck to all the entrants, we are so humbled by your support!

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Fundraising Raffle

We will also be holding a fundraising raffle with some exciting prizes!

Raffle tickets are $20 each and can be purchased here on this webpage, or at the opening night.

[Raffle tickets sales coming soon. Please email Bex comms@adventurespecialties.co.nz in the meantime]

*If you win the 1st prize sea kayaking adventure, but sea kayaking doesn’t sound that appealing to you, would you consider “gifting” the prize to one of the local charities or organisations that we work with? They don’t always get enough funding to help all the people (mostly teenagers) that they would like to help. So your generous gift could make a difference in the lives of our local youth. Find out more about the life-changing programmes that we do here.

Who are we?

Adventure Specialties Trust is a non-profit organisation and we use outdoor adventure to grow great communities and create positive change in people’s lives. We work with people from a range of different backgrounds, from high school students on leadership development courses, to youth offenders, to people with disabilities, to community groups, schools, social services, and more.

Our outdoor adventure programmes are lot of fun.

But it goes so much deeper than that.

We believe these things:

• that being in nature is good for us,
• that having relationships with others is a major protective factor against negative life outcomes,
• that health and wellbeing need to be approached in a holistic way,
• that experiencing success and mastery is a key contributor to personal growth,
• that experiencing challenging outdoor activities promotes personal growth,
• and that Adventure Therapy (using outdoor adventure as a form of therapy) is an evidenced form of therapuetic value and change.

So we use group activities and facilitated discussions to explore the important parts of life, like persevering through difficult circumstances, or dealing with hard emotions, or the importance of our connection to other people and our connection to the land.

The participants of our programmes talk about the positive changes that they experience after spending time in nature, like increased wellbeing (physical, mental, emotional and spiritual), increased social skills, a better sense of their own inbuilt character strengths, a desire to continue experiencing the outdoors, and increased manaakitanga (kindness, empathy, respect, generosity and a desire to uplift others).

We have been using outdoor adventure to grow great communities since 1984 and we will continue to do so for as long as we can! For more info about our programmes, please explore the info on our website.

For more info about the opening night, please email Andy (chch@adventurespecialties.co.nz)

For anything related to this webpage, or the rest of the website, please contact Bex (comms@adventurespecialties.co.nz)

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Check out this short video about the progress of the renovations so far. There is still heaps to do but the progress so far is already making a visible difference. Cleaning, painting, putting up shelving and storage, setting up temporary offices … it’s all go!

We are still fundraising to cover the costs of the rest of the renovations, like permanent offices upstairs, a laundry and kitchen, permanent areas for meetings, etc.

If you are able to help us cover any of these costs, we would really appreciate your generous donations! Please visit the Donate page for more info.

– the Team at Adventure Specialties

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