Thu 14 Apr 2016 In: Our Communities View at Wayback View at NDHA
It's a little hard to find at the moment. But the big new home of Auckland's Rainbow Youth organisation are set to become a major player in glbti life in the Queen city and further afield. From a tiny, narrow ex-shop on Karangahape Road, with one broom-cupboard-sized office, a scungy common area and a kitchenette which didn't deserve the name, the group is settling in to hugely bigger, brighter and better premised just a couple of blocks away. “We'd been in the old premises for fifteen years, inheriting it from the old Pride Centre. We'd been looking to move since 2012 when we started employing more staff and were getting extremely cramped,” says RY's Toni Duder. “We didn't have much room for our own peer support groups, let alone for external groups to use it,” she says, looking around the expansive, light and airy new layout which runs between Edinburgh and Abbey Streets at the western end of K' Rd. Toni Duder “We can have events here, it's a cheap space for outside organisations to use and we can do more than one thing at once... in the old space if young people turned up in crisis we'd have to take them down the road for a coffee to chat privately.” The new space includes a big open area with offices at each end, a “pretty” kitchen, gender-neutral toilets and plenty of room for RY's library and community wardrobe. Volunteers took care of the logistics of the move and the ASB came to the party with “a whole bunch of furniture.” Rainbow Youth, which advocates nationally for the rights and well-being of young glbti people, is open at 11 Edinburgh Street between 11am and 5pm Monday to Friday. “Come in and hang out, use the free wifi... sometimes we have free food left over from functions too!” Duder laughs. Jasy Bennie - 14th April 2016