Who We Are
Reframe Wānanga is an initiative empowering young people aged 13 to 24 across Waitaha/Canterbury to discover what supports their mental health and wellbeing.
Everything that we do is as a collaboration between people with professional knowledge, through their training or work in mental health, and people who have valuable knowledge based on their own experiences of mental health diagnosis, distress or trauma recovery. We are based in the youth team of Stepping Stone Trust, a mental health service in Canterbury, and work with people from around Waitaha to develop and run courses.
Our team who established Reframe Wānanga includes Annie, Aland, Rachel, Renee, Emily, Isla, Jessi and Ben and you can read more about these fab people here. Ben is our co-ordinator and can be reached at rw@stepstone.org.nz with any enquiries
We also work with lots of different people locally to design and facilitate courses and workshops. Some of these amazing people are mental health staff, youth workers, artists, librarians, young people, peer support workers, counsellors, and more.
We’re big on “co-production” which means that all of our courses have been designed by kaimahi in the mental health area and taiohi whaiora. Each course is also facilitated by someone with a peer perspective and someone with a professional background. We hope this means that you will find courses practical, safe, “real” and relateable
Reframe Wānanga courses and workshops are available to young people in Otautahi and Waitaha in the community and in schools. We are really excited to have teamed up with Christchurch Libraries to run community courses and workshops in Libraries, and to be supporting young people in schools learn about mental health.
Our courses in the community and in schools provide Rangatahi the chance to learn more about mental health in a fun and interactive way, as well as tools to help with big feelings and times that are tough. We offer a range of courses on different mental health topics, which can range from a single course or workshop, to courses which run across a whole term. Contact the Reframe Wānanga to find out more
What We Do
Te manu e kai ana i te miro, nōna te ngahere; te manu e kai ana i te mātauranga, nōna te ao
We believe in an educational and empowerment approach to mental health and wellbeing, because knowledge is power
We’re not a counselling service or a mental health clinic, we don’t do therapy or need you to have a referral showing your mental health is “bad enough” to be here….
What we are about is providing lots of opportunities for young people to learn about how our brains, bodies, thoughts and emotions work, and try out creative things that could support your wellbeing or to get through tough times (whatever those look like for you)
Some of our workshops are one-off events over a couple of hours, other courses run over four or five sessions or weeks. We aim to keep group sizes small and provide support for people coming along to get the most out of being involved – whether that’s making sure there are gluten free snacks, to providing some phone or txt support before a course to help combat feelings of big anxiety.
There are a range of topics from art to yoga, and lots in between so check out our courses page to read more.
Shout outs
We are thankful to David Ellison Charitable Trust for funding to help us establish over the first three years
Jeremy at Dim Sim Media designed this fab website, and Ewan Fish for creating our logo and art work.
Big thanks to all the mental health services lending us their staff as course facilitators
And all our peer facilitators who have turned their hard-won wisdom into something that can be shared with others for us all to learn from