St John's Youth Services

Our major charity since 2010, Credit Union SA is a proud supporter of St John’s Youth Services, which strives to improve the lives of the most disadvantaged young people in our community through the provision of emergency accommodation, child support services and transition-to-independent-living programs.

St John’s receives over 1,000 referrals a year and has accommodated a total of over 7,500 individual young people and almost 1,000 small dependent children.

Many of these young people stay in the services only once, but over half return within three months and many face such overwhelming barriers that the services provided by St John’s become their de-facto family.

St John’s Youth Services exist to break the cycle of homelessness before it can take hold of young lives. They work with young people throughout the Adelaide metropolitan area who are experiencing, or are at serious risk of experiencing, homelessness.

We see three particularly valuable benefits in St John’s Youth Services’ work:

1. They are making a difference to the lives of disadvantaged young people in South Australia
2. They are seeking to make that difference long-term
3. The programs they run are empowering, educational and individualised.

Some of the ways Credit Union SA staff and members have supported St John's Youth Services have been by, collecting winter clothes, participating in the City to Bay, re-built their website and each year we organise the Giving Tree for St John's Youth Services to collect gifts and donations.