General News
4 July, 2024
Live4Life ramps up locally
Highview College welcomed Live4Life Central Goldfields’ first ever ‘crew’ last week, encouraging students to be proactive around mental health. Live4Life is a mental health promotion charity that has partnered with 14 local government areas...
Highview College welcomed Live4Life Central Goldfields’ first ever ‘crew’ last week, encouraging students to be proactive around mental health.
Live4Life is a mental health promotion charity that has partnered with 14 local government areas across Victoria and Tasmania to implement the Live4Life model, the only youth mental health education and suicide prevention model designed specifically for rural and regional communities.
The model aims to deliver evidence-based mental health education to adults, supervisors, year eight and year 10 students to support young adults and lead conversations about mental health.
The role of The Crew at Highview College, consisting of year nine students Connor, Curtis, Ella and Josh, is to be mental health ambassadors and promote positive mental health messaging.
Bridget Wilson, Highview College’s head of junior school — year eight, said the implementation of The Crew adds onto the impact of the Live4Life model.
“It is really great to see it all come together, it is always really hard to be the first of anything, the students that have become a part of it have been really dedicated and I am really proud of their efforts,” she said.
“The important thing is to have some young people in this community trying to champion mental health.
“The idea of the Live4Life model is to have that positive approach to mental health across the entire community — we know in regional and rural areas there is definitely some attitudes in the communities and it is really great to see our young people leading the way in changing that.”
Member of The Crew, Connor, said he is excited by the opportunity to help others.
“I had previous first aid training as well from my primary school so I was already aware of the importance of mental health,” he said.
“Helping people is always a good thing and it makes me happy knowing that I can support my fellow students.”
Fellow member of The Crew Josh agreed with Connor, and said their Listen Up Stand Up campaign will encourage students to be an upstander, not a bystander to mental health.
“The Live4Life model helps out a lot when you are trying to talk to people about what they need and it gives us an idea of what to do when someone is going through a tough time,” he said.
“Our theme Listen Up Stand Up is about standing up for what is right and listening to people when they are trying to get support for their mental health.”