Teaching character to many generations

Life Education and Healthy Harold the giraffe have been helping out for 40 years and even better things are ahead

IT’S a name that sets some great expectations – Life Education.

It certainly seems a lofty goal, given that life is something you never stop learning about until the day you die, but the charity born on the streets of Kings Cross has always had high hopes.

Formed 40 years ago to help teach children how to make safer and healthier choices to prevent issues like addiction and abuse, the group is now firmly entrenched in the Australian education system.

Who doesn’t have fond memories of Healthy Harold the giraffe? Or visiting the Life Education Queensland headquarters at Broadbeach?

But while that brick building might be ageing, constructed by Gold Coast businessmen and philanthropists Brian Ray and Ron McMaster back in 1987, the program itself remains relevant.

In fact, in an already overcrowded curriculum, Healthy Harold has become every teacher’s best friend, offering an opportunity to outsource lessons on nutrition, personal safety, emotional and mental wellbeing, cyber safety, drug and alcohol dangers and even sexual health.

Well, Harold himself doesn’t give the sex talk … because that would just be weird.

Now as schools get back in session, teachers will need all the help they can get.

Life Education will be there with a message more important than ever.

“It’s a lot that teachers have to do now, schools are required to deliver so much in health and physical education, and our programs mean that instead of teachers needing to source more content, there’s a program ready for

them,” says Michael Fawsitt, CEO of Life Education Queensland.

“Our program is actually aligned with ACARA outcomes (Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority), primary teachers across the board can use it and regularly report to us what a help it is for them.

“Then there’s our puberty module, which is always in huge demand.

“I think when it comes to questions about the birds and the bees, teachers are quite happy to hand that over to an external organisation.

“The students and our teachers have a great time with it. And no, Harold is not involved with that. We get the giggles out of the way first and then get down to learning. It can be a little awkward when it’s your normal teacher delivering those life lessons.

“We’re also working with schools to improve their tuckshops, encouraging school breakfast programs, building fruit and vegetable gardens – all the things schools would love to do but given the pressures they are under, they don’t always have the time or resources.

“As a not-for-profit but forpurpose charity, we can give them that help that’s not out of their pocket or their timetable.”

Just as the pandemic has forced schools into online teaching, Michael says Life Education has also adapted its in-school programs to screens.

Last month saw the launch of Life Education@Home, with online modules covering topics like staying safe and healthy during COVID-19, as well as regular lessons around nutrition, physical activity, cyber safety and social and emotional wellbeing.

The online lessons have now been adopted by 70 schools around the state, with more than 700 users, and that number is expected to grow as students return.

Michael says Life Education mobile classrooms are expected to resume faceto-face teaching by term 3, but online lessons might remain a permanent option for the organisation, with e-modules allowing the organisation to reach more at-risk students than ever before.

He says the crux of the coronavirus crisis also hits at what is the heart of Life Education lessons: prevention.

“If just a fraction of the resources being applied around the world now in response to COVID-19 had been focused on research after SARS and MERS, we may have been in a very different position to the nightmare unfolding in some countries right now,” he says.

“We are hard wired to recognise and react to immediate danger. This is an important protection mechanism, helping to keep us safe. However, this survival trait also means that we tend to ignore or pay less attention to threats that are longer term.

“This is one reason we have so many chronic health conditions that could have been avoided had we focused more on adopting a healthier lifestyle. Preventive health education underpins the Life Education program, with our educators reaching more than 700,000 Australian children every year, as well as delivering the program in a dozen or so countries around the world. Prevention can save countless lives and suffering.

“In Australia, we have the benefit of one of the world’s best health systems. In my previous role with World Vision, I saw first-hand the devastation of the AIDS epidemic on communities in countries like Uganda in the 1980s and early ’90s – and I fear for developing countries right now.

“They are completely unprepared for this. Those living in poverty, lacking adequate health care and sanitation, many already suffering from poor health and disease, these are among the most vulnerable as COVID-19 inevitably spreads across the developing world. Who is going to protect them?

“In our own backyard, the elderly, the lonely, the homeless, the sick and those in poverty must also be protected as best we can. This includes both their physical health and their mental health. We need to be on the front foot when it comes to looking after them.”

Michael says prevention is also integral when it comes to protecting the health of charitable institutions, with many facing a precarious future due to the pandemic.

It is a lesson he learned first-hand, guiding Life Education Queensland from an organisation on life support in the mid-2000s to a position now just as healthy as Harold himself.

“Right now, we are in truly uncharted territory. The restrictions on public gatherings, the need for physical distancing, as necessary as this is, are placing increasing pressure on many charities.

“But when I first came to Life Education, the situation wasn’t fantastic either. We only had 13 staff and no government support.

“Now we have 50 staff, we reach 200,000 students every year and we have contracts with Queensland Health, a number of other funders, as well as thousands of Queenslanders who support us every month.

“It wasn’t easy rebuilding but we were strategic and we thought long-term. We looked at preventing funding shortfalls.

“We were given an incredible bequest by a couple who, for personal reasons in their lives, were passionate about drugs and alcohol prevention. They wanted to see young people’s lives improved and believed in what Life Education does.

“I took the view, along with our board, that we shouldn’t just spend this money given to us but we should invest it in building up our fundraising capability for the future so that generations more can benefit.

“As a result of that, we now have 7000 Queenslanders who make a monthly donation and that equals more than a million dollars every year in ongoing support that we can literally bank on.

“It’s never easy running a charity and it’s never been harder than right now. But there are lessons we can take from this to prevent it happening again.

“There are opportunities in this too.

“So many schools that we couldn’t physically reach in the past are now jumping on board online.

“The playing field has changed so we have to be creative with how we deliver our services.

“We’re not delivering to the extent we want to be, but we’re making sure that this enlarges our reach in the future.”

To kickstart Life Education Queensland’s next steps, the centre itself is expected to receive an upgrade in the next year, with the Life Education building part of an $8.3 million revamp of the ageing Albert Waterways Community Centre near Pacific Fair.

Michael says although the building is no longer a hub for students as it was in the 1980s, with Life Education educators now travelling to schools instead, there are plans to bring in a new generation.

“Our programs have always centred on primary school years but we do work within senior schools as well,” he says.

“What we are hoping to do, using the planned new facilities, is to bring senior student leaders here and train them to be Life Education influencers on their own campus.

“It’s flipping the social media influencer program on its head and using that strategy in real life for a really good purpose.”

It’s yet another great expectation. But perhaps that is the meaning of Life … Education.

Harold should be so proud.

‘So many health conditions could have been avoided’