Sidney Tauamiti

I work in Youth Justice which entails working with young people who have engaged in high end offending. I have significant experience in this sector, currently working for Youth and Cultural Development, more commonly known as YCD and prior to this working in the same space for the now disestablished Canterbury Youth Development Programme. I officially began working in the ‘youth work’ space as a tracker for the Ministry of Education while studying at University of Canterbury. This involved supporting intermediate school students who were disengaging from mainstream education and I have also worked in various other schools in a similar capacity. Working with youth has been a vocation rather than a career and as such I have also held roles working with youth through church and have coached teenage community rugby for over 20 years.

I am of Samoan heritage but have grown up in Christchurch for almost my entire life. I have been blessed in my life to have been supported by various people from the different communities I grew up being a part of, not least of all my family. I come from a big family with 4 brothers and 2 sisters, 2 of whom are adopted, all raised by a very strong single mother who as aforementioned had lots of support. I am married with 2 young boys we are expecting our 3rd child in early 2021. I love all sports but have been heavily involved in rugby as a player and coach and have done a fair bit of stadium announcing for Canterbury Rugby, the Crusaders as well as the Canterbury Rams basketball team over the years.