But the charity’s co-founder told The Ensign the closure was essential for the organisation to regroup and figure out how to be financially viable for the future.
The Graeme Dingle Foundation’s Southern branch, known for bringing Kiwi Can, or Kiwi Kaha, to local schools, has been shut down by the foundation.
On her last day teaching emotional intelligence and resilience to Mataura School students last week, Southern youth management leader Emma Keen said she was "devastated" to be losing such a "rewarding" job.
Kiwi Kaha, which was weekly in Southland and Queenstown Lakes schools, taught children valuable life skills that teachers did not have time for in regular schooling, she said.
She had seen such a positive change in her students, particularly those considered badly behaved or with neurodivergence, from the initiative.
Foundation co-founder Jo-anne Wilkinson said the decision to close was not an easy one and she understood how close to the heart Kiwi Kaha was to the South.
It was running a "federation model" that meant each region had an independent board which was granted a licence to run the programmes.
"Much like a franchise," she said.
It decided to change the structure at the beginning of the year, to merge each independent board into a central, nationalised one, to make decision-making and therefore fundraising easier.
"With the financial climate that we were in the last couple of years, we found making decisions more and more difficult because of the size of the organisation," she said.
It needed to quickly and unanimously agree to the needs of funders to stay afloat, she said.
After doing its "due diligence" throughout the year, the Foundation’s board decided the Southern branch would not financially survive the merger.
Additionally, Ms Wilkinson said she was told by Southern board chairwoman Marie McDonald that it would lose local funding with the merger.
This reasoning goes against what was said by Ms McDonald, who said the branch had all its funding sorted, as it had for 24 years, and was willing and prepared to merge.
"There's ways and means you live within your budget and that's how we've operated for many years," Ms McDonald said.
Ms Wilkinson was also adamant that it would return to the Southern, Marlborough, Hawke’s Bay and Wellington regions that did not survive the merger.
"The programmes will be back," she said.
"We've just got to get ourselves into a position where we're financially stable and have a structure that is going to attract the funding because we are, you know, stable and sustainable."
But Graeme Dingle Foundation southern general manager Anna Gaitt was doubtful the closure was just a pause on operations.
She said, looking around her empty office, a pause would have been everything would have gone into storage, but it had been advised to shut down and dispose of its assets.
"It's been just absolutely devastating, obviously not just for the team, but for our community as well," she said.
