New Zealand to spend $4 million to help teenagers recover from breakups

New Zealand has launched a campaign – ‘Love Better’ in a bid to help youngsters ‘deal with hurt’ better and build healthy boundaries and positive attitude towards relationships.

The campaign is a bid to support young people through their formative experiences, to build an approach to positively impact their future relationships.(Shutterstock)

“We know that break-ups hurt,” affirmed a New Zealand government press release on Wednesday, as it launched a campaign ‘Love Better’. The initiative is the government’s approach to family harm prevention as the country hopes to inculcate a life-long attitude among younger generations to ‘deal better with being hurt’.

With a planned budget of about $4 million over a span of three years, the campaign is being run by the country’s social development ministry. “The initiative will support young people through these formative experiences, in a bid to positively impact how they approach future relationships,” the statement said.

“Over 1,200 young kiwis told us they need support to deal with early experiences of love and hurt, and break-ups were identified as a common challenge,” associate minister for Social Development and Employment Priyanca Radhakrishna said, revealing the origins of the campaign.

Young people told us they need support dealing with love and hurt – and particularly how to break-up better. Today we launched a world-leading campaign, LoveBetter, which will help support our rangatahi.

Break-ups hurt. That’s normal. But we want to support young people to know that there is a way through without harming themselves or others.

Watch out for LoveBetter coming to a platform near you!

Promoting the hashtag ‘own the feels’, the campaign aims at encouraging youngsters to share their experiences to help their peers who may be facing a similar challenge. Through the presence of real accounts floating on several social media platforms, the government believes this would be an authentic way to build strength, self-worth, and resilience among young people as they learn to navigate through tough emotions.

“New Zealand has shameful statistics of family and sexual violence and we need innovative approaches to break the cycle,” Radhakrishnan said. As per a government survey, 87% of 16-24 year-olds in New Zealand’s population, who have been in a relationship have experienced harm beyond a ‘normal breakup’, Guardian reported.

Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence and Sexual Violence Marama Davidson, welcoming the campaign, said it was in sync with the government’s effort to build healthier daily relationships. “The campaign continues the government’s delivery on Te Aorerekura – New Zealand’s first ever National Strategy to Eliminate Family Violence and Sexual Violence,” she added.