Our annual celebration to honour those who have made a positive difference in Australian children's lives

Life Education’s glittering annual Gold Harold Awards acknowledges leading Australian individuals and organisations that have made a significant contribution to the health and wellbeing of Australia’s children and young people.  Her Excellency Professor Marie Bashir AC CVO, Governor of NSW was the Guest of Honour at the Hilton Sydney, with celebrities and stars of media mixing with captains of industry and sporting personalities.

'All Systems Go' is Life Education’s latest development in its suite of 10 primary school health education modules.

Designed for children in their 2nd – 4th year of schooling 'All Systems Go' is a science fiction take on the human body and its workings. ”The Venture” and its crew take the class on an exciting and dramatic journey travelling in the blood stream through the human body and its systems. A combination of live action and 3D animationinforms and entertains screen-savvy children along the journey of discovery of the workings of the human body from the inside out. Key learning’s include body parts and functions and issues related to the effects of healthy eating, peer pressure, second hand smoking and medicines.

'All Systems Go' is delivered in schools by trained educators in our unique Mobile Learning Centres, where children are engaged with ‘hands on interactive activities’ that enhance and support issues arising in the DVD narrative.These messages are reinforced with Life Education’s teacher and student resources with ongoing teaching and learning activities to reinforce and extend the session in the Mobile Learning Centre.

To ensure Life Education’s continued success in engaging children across Australia with its unique health education program that assists them to make safe health and lifestyle choices, Life Education has partnered with Bupa Australia.

“Bupa is proud to partner with Life Education - a leader in children’s education about life and health.  This newly updated module ‘All Systems Go’ is a fun and interactive way for primary school children to learn about their bodies so they better understand what to do to be healthy.  This knowledge will provide a vital foundation for healthy living through-out their lives.” Dr Christine Bennett, Chief Medical Officer Bupa Australia.

To have a sneak peek at our exciting and innovative new program watch the 'All Systems Go' trailer below:

A huge thank you to all those Legends who participated in Ocsober and ‘cut out’ alcohol for the month – well done and a sincere thank you, both from Life Education and the children of Australia!

Over $500,000 was raised for Life Education to educate children about the effects of drug and alcohol misuse – and promote a healthy life style.

A special thank you to our top teams who included:

Team Nissan $57,154
The Budget Smugglers - Tasmania $16,573
NT Police, Fire and Emergency Services  $14,348
Box Hill Hawks F C  $12,650
Royal Australian Navy  $8,017
Isuzu's Sober Truckies  $6,440
Panchos Mexican Cantina  $4,256
Minter Ellison  $3,731

along with our our top individual fund raisers who, along with Life Educations number one hero David Rayner,(who has raised over $20,000!) include:

Paul Wheelton $13,515
Tony Hasham $12,035
Tony Romano $ 5,915
Paul Williams $ 5,250
Angela Young $ 5,000
Fred Kurzman $ 4,946

Thank you again to all the "Legends" who took part in our 2010 Ocsober Campaign. We are already planning for Ocsober 2011 to be bigger and better and look forward to you joining us "sober in October" again!

The Royal Australian Navy was an outstanding host at this year’s launch of Life Ed’s major fundraiser, Ocsober.   Guests were invited onto the flight deck of HMAS Ballarat, the RAN’s ANZAC Class Guided Missile Frigate, with Healthy Harold in attendance to make new friends and promote the event.

Among the guests were former Ocsober Legends who had foregone alcohol during October in previous years, as well as current Ambassadors such as NSW Swift’s netball player, Courtney Tairi, the 12th Man, Billy Birmingham and NRL star, Mario Fenech, who said “I love trying to help the community to push a message that can only help society!”

Australian kids and adults nationwide have heard of Healthy Harold, Life Education’s loveable mascot. For over 30 years, Healthy Harold along with Life Education has become an expert at teaching Australian children how to value themselves by living a healthy lifestyle and avoiding drug and alcohol abuse. But few are aware that Australia’s favourite giraffe is also an accomplished world traveller! For nearly as many years, Life Education has had affiliate organisations in Barbados, Cyprus, Finland, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Macau, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

Spotlight on Hong Kong

Harold and his Hong Kong friend, Holly the Horse, have been working with Hong Kong’s Life Education Activities Programme (LEAP) for 15 years. An extremely multicultural country, Hong Kong has its own set of needs and challenges that have contributed to some of LEAP’s unique program elements. The following interview with Ms. Vence Poon, LEAP’s Senior Education Officer, gives us some insight on how Life Education functions in Hong Kong.

Q: How does the Life Education program work in your country?

A: We are known as Life Education Activity Programme (LEAP) in Hong Kong and the structure of our service is pretty much the same as other Life Education counterparts.  We offer programmes to nursery up to Year 6 classes in the mobile classrooms; and we deliver Year 7 to 9 programmes in the school classrooms.  For more information of these programmes, please visit our website www.leap.org.hk.

Each student who participates in the LEAP session pays a nominal fee and each student receives a workbook and the teacher receives a CD-Rom for follow up work.  Since we live in a very multicultural and multilingual city, we offer our programmes in three different languages – English, Cantonese and Mandarin. Thus, the educational videos are slightly different for the three programmes, but the core content is very similar.

My children were fortunate enough to have a Life Education visit whilst at day care when they were little. Their excitement afterwards took days to subside. They talked on and on about what (puppet) Harold said, not occurring to them that it was what Mum and Dad tell them all the time too.

But the real learning was visible when the moans and groans about cleaning teeth were transformed into a ‘Harold said……’ on the importance of cleaning them. So Mum and Dad didn’t get the message across but a giraffe with no teeth to them is the authority on dental care. Well – it worked. And for months and months after, the recall on what ‘Harold said..’ worked beautifully.

And even after a few years, I can still emphasise the cleaning teeth issue and refer back to Harold and get a positive result.

It then occurred to me that in the eyes of a child, no matter how big or small, it sometimes takes that third person (or giraffe) to back up the messages of Mum and/or Dad, because, as we all know, what do Mum and Dad know!

And in trying to understand why the Life Education messages work, I came to the conclusion that it is about respect. My children have a respect for Healthy Harold and for the educators from Life Education and I believe this is earned because it is mutual respect.

The educators cover topics in a non judgmental and age appropriate way. When parents try and do this, it is combined with hopes and more so their fears. But together, we make a great team. When your children get the opportunity to participate in a Life Education experience, as parents, ask questions and listen, really listen, to what messages where important to them. Supporting these is a valuable way to reinforce those teachings and even learn a few things yourself.

When you first have children, you are told the hardest part is getting through the sleepless nights and tantrums. But the reality becomes clear as they grow and venture into the world that it is going to be a long hard road to ensure that they come out the end as healthy happy adults.

There is no manual on raising children but I feel a little more confident that Life Education has my back when it comes to helping guide them through those issues that life is going to throw at them. But it is a team effort.

Marisa Wilson

Parent of Matt & Emery

Firstly, a happy new year to you! We would again like to thank you for your support to Life Education in 2009. 2010 promises to be an exciting year for Life Education but before we go too far, we would like to let you know what we achieved last year!

In 2009, Life Education reached almost 700,000 children across Australia and provided education and support to their families and teachers. Here is just one example:

“Just a quick vote of confidence in Healthy Harold. Our 4 year old son has been very limited in the fruit and vegetables he would eat, despite our best efforts. Harold recently visited his preschool and from that very afternoon the change in his eating habits has been remarkable.” (NSW Parent)

Life Education Tasmania was formed to allow us to bring our drug and health education program to children living in this state. We (and Harold!) are really looking forward to meeting many new young children in this State!

Life Education also visited two mining towns, Collie in Western Australia and Blackwater in Queensland, and was able to provide our health and education programs.

The Gold Harold Awards took place in July at The Four Seasons Hotel in Sydney. This is the second year that the Gold Harold Awards Night has been held. The night is an occasion to recognise people who have contributed to the healthy development of children through their work, philanthropy, or volunteer efforts. Recipients of the Gold Harold Award included journalist and TV presenter Melissa Doyle and The Menzies School of Health Research.

A new education module called “Mind Your Medicine”, highlighting the dangers of the misuse of medicines, was launched. Mind Your Medicine has been extremely well received in schools and has been delivered to over 93,000 children since its release in February this year.

In December, Life Education held its first International Conference in Sydney. Delegates from all over Australia and Life Education’s international community came together to share information and skills. It also gave our teachers the chance to update their knowledge and skills and be reinvigorated by the many topics our international speakers presented.

Life Education is well aware of the need to provide people with information and resources on drug, alcohol and health issues. As a result, we redesigned and updated this  website  to provide more information and resources.

“Ocsober”, our main fundraising campaign, was a huge success. The money raised goes directly to Life Education to give more children the skills and knowledge to say “No” to drugs. Our thanks go to our Ambassadors who endorsed and promoted Ocsober, our Legends who gave up alcohol in October, and their supporters who gave their financial support.

2009 was a time for strategic planning for Life Education. Life Education completed a five year strategic plan which has the aim of allowing us to reach one million children across Australia.

Parents are a vital influence on their children and during 2009 Life Education continued to conduct Family Forums and Parent Information Sessions.

These achievements only happen because of people like you who believe in what we do. 2010 will be a year of new challenges for us at Life Education. We know, however, that with your support we can meet these challenges. Our children are our future.