If it takes a village to raise a child, so it does to address social issues involving children and young people.
It’s for this very reason that Life Ed, the largest and most recognised provider of preventative health education in schools, forges powerful partnerships with various organisations at both national and state levels. Life Ed educates around 600,000 children and young people a year and works with more than 5,000 schools, preschools and early learning centres across the country. Since 1979, it has delivered over 18 million memorable learning experiences to children and young people.
“Our mission is to empower children and young people to make safer and healthier choices through education,” said Life Ed Australia CEO Russell D’Costa. “We do this through our program, which uses a whole-of-school approach, offering age-appropriate modules that evolve as children do. Each of those learning journeys is developed using the latest research and best practices, ensuring students, as well as their teachers and families, are supported through every stage of their development.”
A lot of people know Life Ed for its trusty mascot, Healthy Harold, who brings learning to life for children and often sparks nostalgia for adults. Each Life Ed module introduces real-world topics in a safe, engaging way, helping students practice positive decision-making before they face these situations in everyday life.
“We believe that children learn best by doing, and that’s why we create memorable learning experiences that encourage students to interact with and critically evaluate their environment in such a way,” Mr D’Costa said.
At Third Sector Leaders Forum 2025, he will be exploring the value of partnerships to Life Ed’s work. Below is a glimpse into his upcoming session.
How do you collaborate with funders to co-design solutions that extend beyond transactional giving?
The most important part of this process is to start with a shared understanding of the problem that we want to address collectively.
In partnerships, it’s essential to recognise and value what each partner brings. As an example, for us at Life Ed, we have a strong brand, an iconic mascot, significant reach and impact, and we know that’s what we can bring to a partnership.
We then look to the government for policy. We align our educational knowledge experience, which can have a huge impact with government policy and corporate partners that are aligned with our vision and mission. That’s when we get the best results.
How does partnering with the government, corporates and philanthropy help you address social issues such as vaping, online safety, and health and nutrition?
In the area of vaping, we partnered with Consumer Healthcare Products Australia. They funded the development of our new vaping module for students in years 5 and 6, called ‘Take a Breath’. This module provides children with the education they need to make good, informed decisions around vaping. In addition to that, we worked with the government to help amplify the vaping legislation and reforms. This is where we see Life Ed coming together with the government and a corporate partner to provide that triumvirate that helps us address challenging issues like vaping.
In terms of online safety, we partnered with Google. The beauty here is that we look to work with our individual strengths: Google in the online world, and us in 5,000 schools. We partnered together for the ‘Be Internet Awesome’ program. Google came to Life Ed to launch the program in Australia, and we leveraged our school presence and strong brand in the Australian market to help amplify some of the good work that is done there.
Meanwhile, in the nutrition space, we partnered with Woolworths, a fresh food provider. We created a campaign that we run each year called ‘Australia’s Healthier Lunchboxes’, where children can share how they’re developing healthy lunchboxes and win prizes as a result.
How do you deliver maximum reach and impact?
We need resources. That’s why we look to government, donors and corporate partners to support us.
We’re lucky at Life Ed, as we’re 45 years old, and we have a strong network across the country that enables us to deliver in 5,000 schools. We have that reach, and now we’re focusing on demonstrating our impact. And demonstrating impact requires a strong and contemporary evidence-based theory of change and measurement, evaluation and learning framework.
In addition to this, we found ways to reach those children who don’t learn Life Ed by creating the Thrive Children’s Fund in partnership with Woolworths. This fund enables corporate partners to invest in Life Ed to ensure that we can get to some of those schools that often don’t receive our services—those in rural, regional and underserved communities.
We recognise that we can’t always get to all areas across Australia, so corporate partners help us through the Thrive Children’s Fund. We also now have Sanitarium investing in it.
Don’t miss the chance to learn practical examples of how corporate and sector partnerships can help tackle complex social problems. Register for the Third Sector Leaders Forum now.
Geraldine is currently the Content Producer for Third Sector, an Akolade channel. Throughout her career, she has written for various industries and international audiences. Her love for writing extends beyond the corporate world, as she also works as a volunteer writer at her local church. Aside from writing, she is also fond of joining fun runs and watching musicals.
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