Article by: Luke Foster, Psychologist

For those of you who don’t know, LIVIN’s social impact is very much geared towards breaking the stigma surrounding mental ill health in young people so that they feel able to speak up about their feelings and challenges. Also, as a flow on effect, to prevent people from dying too young. The bulk of funds raised through the sale of our merchandise, corporate donations and our amazing fundraisers go back into the delivery of our LIVINWell Mental Health Awareness and Stigma Reduction Program in schools. We have delivered these face-to-face presentations to over 80,000 people to date – crikey!!!

Given current day circumstances – THE PANDEMIDC – getting in front of students in schools face-to-face has obviously not been possible – this sucks! As a result, a few people have politely and understandably so reached out to us at LIVIN and asked what we are now doing with the money we raise. Let us tell you now, the show certainly must go on, and it certainly is! We aren’t letting this bloody virus stop us from achieving our mission.

SO, WHAT ARE WE CURRENTLY UP TO?

• Our brand-new podcast has been released – It Ain’t Weak to Speak with Sam Webb
• LIVINWell Online to the Australian business community (hold your horses, it’s coming very, very soon)
• New merchandise designs – they look siiiiiiiick!
• Focussing on giving our community (that’s you!) the latest and greatest mental health information to help you through this time. Whether it be on the blog, in the news, or Instagram LIVE – we are doing our best to break it down for you.

It’s all happening.   

AND WHAT IS THIS HELPING US TO ACHIEVE?

We have been embracing this period of ‘lock down’ to expand our creativity and explore new ways to connect with YOU, the LIVIN family. We have established a wonderful relationship with Ernst and Young, a highly experienced organisation helping us to develop theory, gather evidence and tell our story in an innovative and compelling way.

We already know, through our own data collection and evidence base that what we are doing at LIVIN is having a positive impact on the mental health of not only the youth of this country, but also the broader community. But, this lovely relationship with Ernst and Young is helping us to refine our offerings, particularly to younger people, so that we can become even more effective. The ideas being thrashed around in Zoom call after Zoom call are seriously cool and we look forward to providing some highly effective and unique offerings to young Australians post COVID-19.

During this time where physical distancing is being enforced, we are certainly not sitting back and resting. It’s go, go, go time at LIVIN and with the assistance of Ernst and Young we are super excited about what’s to come. With that said, you can trust that all those pennies still being generously donated to LIVIN are being well managed, helping us to remain in business and on track to achieve our mission to break the stigma surrounding mental health.

Thank you to everyone for your ongoing support during these challenging times.