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ARL and Youthline changing lives on and off the field

ARL and Youthline partner to change lives

March 20, 2014

Youthline will become the first charity partner of the Auckland Rugby League (ARL) on March 20.

A ceremony to celebrate the partnership will be held at 10:30 am at Youthline Auckland Central in Ponsonby.

Youthline Auckland CEO Stephen Bell said young people will reap the rewards of this partnership.

“We hope it will help young people to know where to go for help and enable them to reach out when they need to,” Mr Bell said.

Auckland Rugby League Football Operations Manager Gordon Gibbons said the partnership was sure to prove beneficial to both parties.

“We are very pleased to have established this link with Youthline, who do wonderful work in our community and are a perfect fit for the ARL,” Gibbons said.

“This enables us to provide help to our clubs and players not only on the field, but off it as well. Each club will also be able to raise awareness for Youthline within their own community.

“We need to get the message out to our young players that no issue they are facing is too big to solve,” Gibbons said.

Gibbons said ARL chose Youthline as a charity partner because our values align with their own philosophies and ARL saw it as an opportunity to work together to increase awareness about the importance of speaking up and talking about how young people are feeling.

This is in line with ARL tag line – on and off the field - showing that they see the importance of the players seeing their sports team as a community and a place where they can get support and guidance.
The clubs have seen what happens when young people do not feel connected in their sports clubs and would like to work with Youthline to ensure the boys and girls who play league know where to go for support, Gibbons said.

Auckland Rugby League CEO John Ackland was equally enthusiastic about the announcement, which had been in the making since late last year.

“This partnership is what rugby league is all about and we look forward to working with Youthline,” Ackland said.

“Young people are the future of our game, so something like this can only be positive,” Ackland said.

ARL is the governing body for 32 clubs from Waiuku to Rodney and has over 10,000 members and about 6,000 of those are young people.

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