All Aboard for the Bus Stop Tour

17th of August, 2015

In recent weeks, 15 Canterbury High Schools have experienced the ‘Bus Stop Tour’. The event featured a show by performing arts group No Limits, which focussed on the topics of family violence, drugs and alcohol, suicide and bullying using a powerful combination of hugely moving content, musical brilliance and some surprisingly light notes which provided comic relief. 

The Bus Stop Tour was a collaborative effort between No Limits; the Youth and Prevention Work Streams of the Canterbury Family Violence Collaboration; Aviva; He Waka Tapu; and CPIT, and its goal was to put a human face to services that offer help to young people, and thereby encourage them to make use of that support when they need it. Students also received a custom-made wallet card which included tips to help others; agencies that can help; and warning signs that somebody is unsafe.

Darragh from Aviva took up the challenge to co-ordinate the programme for the event at Catholic Cathedral College. Speakers included professionals from 298 Youth, who discussed suicide and mental health; the SPCA, who talked about the link between abuse of animals and violence in later life; and Aviva, who discussed family violence using material from our Youth Programme.

The Tour proved to be a very effective way to connect with many young people in our community who needed support. “In each session we had one or two kids who had concerns and wanted to talk more about their experiences” says Darragh. “We made sure we had additional staff on hand to allow them to leave the room and talk privately and we then linked them with the school counsellors to ensure they got ongoing support.”

Overall, the students rated their experience of the tour very highly - 95% of students gave it an ‘awesome’ ranking!