The Smith Family is Australia’s largest education-focused children’s charity, which reaches more than 134,000 disadvantaged families across 94 Australian communities each year.

At The Smith Family, there is an ongoing focus on supporting the development of stronger literacy and numeracy skills in children and young people. Improved interest and capability in numeracy for example, will have a benefit in the years to come, as these young people can go on to consider careers in the STEM disciplines of science, technology, mathematics and engineering. Talent in these disciplines will be critical drivers of our nation’s innovation and future successes.

Businesses recognise the importance of STEM capabilities for the nation’s future prosperity. And also, in their own organisations, they recognise the need for an employment pipeline of suitably qualified individuals.

Let’s Count: The Origin Foundation partnership

In 2011, the Origin Foundation saw the opportunity to be involved in growing STEM capability, by supporting, from the early stage, a Smith Family program that addressed the development of numeracy skills in children. To enable its roll out, they committed $1.6m to The Smith Family over three years. In addition to providing funding to trial and grow the original program, Origin also worked with The Smith Family to ensure that there was a robust analysis of the results.

The Let’s Count program supports the mathematical knowledge and skills of three to five-year-olds from disadvantaged backgrounds as they prepare to start school. It was designed by The Smith Family with Professor Bob Perry of Charles Sturt University and Associate Professor Ann Gervasoni from Monash University. The model facilitates strong links between families and educators, to help them engage in numeracy-based activities with the children in their care.

Leveraging interest from strong program results

An important part of Origin Foundation’s involvement was their specific support of the analysis stage. As well as informing program design and evolution, reporting is important for the future development and growth of the program.

As part of an extensive national campaign to share the positive outcomes being achieved through Let’s Count, The Smith Family and Origin Foundation have hosted a series of Let’s Talk Maths stakeholder events throughout Australia. The objective is to raise awareness of the importance of early intervention in boosting numeracy and to attract new and existing corporate partners to become involved.

Through these events, The Smith Family has engaged government and business leaders in a discussion about the importance of improving the mathematical skill base in Australia and to explore the challenges around creating a more numerate population.

The Smith Family is also rolling out an innovative social enterprise in the form of corporate workshops for employees – Let’s Count at work. The one-hour training session provides employees with ideas about how to support their child’s early numeracy development. It is an interactive and fun learning experience often delivered at lunch time.

The workshops are paid for by the partner organisation with revenue channelled into the delivery of the Let’s Count program to children in disadvantaged communities across Australia. Origin Foundation has also been involved in the development of this model by hosting workshops for more than 300 Origin Energy employees, as well as by their involvement in the structure and positioning of the enterprise itself.

Partnership outcomes

The strategic partnership driving Let’s Count since 2011 has delivered on several levels over the past four years; it has had a successful social impact, it has given rise to a social enterprise product, and it has provided an excellent platform for advocacy and to secure additional support for the Let’s Count program in disadvantaged communities.

With these outcomes, the charity is now looking to expand the scope for Let’s Count to be rolled out to all pre-school aged children, but particularly those in disadvantaged communities where the need is greatest.