Lifehack was a systems-level intervention in youth mental health and wellbeing in Aotearoa New Zealand. Over 2013-2017 we grew the capacity of the system to support the wellbeing of young people, with an emphasis on co-design, prevention and capability building.
Use our runsheets, methods and other resources to improve your work alongside young people.
If you need inspiration or ideas for your own youth wellbeing programmes, our blog is the place for you.
Interested in our approach? Our initiatives page shows the range of programmes we ran from 2013 to 2017.
Our Impact
Lifehack put young people at the centre of service innovation. Between 2013 and 2017, we evolved our ways of working in response to evaluation and reflection on a wide range of activities.
We moved from an ‘app’ focus to working with people across the system who supported youth mental health and wellbeing. Working with people from diverse backgrounds and points of influence in the service system modeled our desire to move the system toward helping young people to flourish.
Our Final Report weaves the threads together
If you're strapped for time, head straight to the section for you:
- Want to support youth-led lab, start up, social enterprise and innovation approaches to youth wellbeing? Section 4 is for you.
- Working on the front-lines to influence youth wellbeing or responsible for workforce development? Check out Section 5.
- Making policy about youth wellbeing, suicide prevention, education and youth development? You'll enjoy Section 6.
Our Latest Articles
Visit the full lifehack blog page to see all our articles.
Flourishing Fellowship applications extended until 8 March!
This is your last chance to apply for the 2017 Flourishing Fellowship! We have extended applications until next Wednesday 8 March at 5pm! (Yes that’s a Wednesday.) Click here to go the application page! We’ve been blown away by the calibre of this year’s applicants We’ve been blown away by the number of applications this year from such quality humans…
Top 5 reasons to support your people to attend the Flourishing Fellowship
Are you a manager or decision-maker trying to decide whether to “sign off” on somebody’s participation in this year’s Flourishing Fellowship? Well – this blog post is for you. Paul McGregor was one of our original Flourishing Fellows. Now, as a member of the Lifehack team, he has a unique perspective on the impact of…
Fellowship applications are open—help us find great humans and be rewarded!
As you may have read on social media, applications for our flagship programme the Flourishing Fellowship are currently open. The three-month part-time programme combines professional and personal development for those in the youth workforce (this is the youth workforce in the widest sense—be it in policy, youth work, teaching, nursing, social work, research, public health etc).…
The Lifehack Community: successes, failures and futures
In the last three years Lifehack has directly engaged with over 1500 people in kanohi ki te kanohi (face-to-face) programmes and events. We’ve put lots of time and effort into creating safe spaces for people to connect and learn. Which means that most people leave feeling hopeful, inspired and motivated to work alongside young people to…
Working with our young people: reflections on Oro from Mike Ryan, Director Community Services, Upper Hutt City Council
Mike Ryan, Director Community Services at Upper Hutt City Council has written this guest post on Oro, Lifehack’s most recent place-based collaboration based in Upper Hutt. In it Mike shares his reflections on the development and benefits of the programme, as well as how the programme has changed the Council’s approach to working with and for Upper Hutt’s young people…
Oro: Final hui and programme celebration evening
Over the past two months the Lifehack team has been running a programme in Upper Hutt called Oro, which focuses on mobilising the local community around a series of local initiatives and igniting localised cross-sector collaboration. This blog post is a wrap up of the final hui and celebration evening held at Expressions Art Centre…
Straight from the horse’s mouth: Youth workers and their lessons on youth engagement
This is a guest post from Paul Thompson and Cat Gooding, who are youth workers at the Upper Hutt Community Youth Trust. During our Upper Hutt programme Oro, those two ran a great session on meaningfully youth engagement – as well as sharing some painful lessons. Big up to those two for being so honest…
Co-designing learning sessions
Earlier this year, Toni and Dayna from Lifehack had been working with a bunch of Lifehack community members to co-design a series of opportunities for people to upskill in a variety of tools that Lifehack has developed in partnership with others (like Ngā Uri Ō, and borrowed (like Five Ways to Wellbeing or Experiments). Lifehack…
Lifehack Weekend – Oro Upper Hutt
On 11 November 2016, around 15 people over the weekend came together to support the Oro whānau in their aspirations to develop existing and build new wellbeing initiatives that are co-designed with young people of Upper Hutt. This weekend event was part of a larger commitment of 26 participants, all of whom are participating in…
In Lifehack's four years, we've learned a lot about how to apply tools and processes from codesign, facilitation, technology, te ao Māori, social enterprise and wellbeing science to a youth wellbeing context.
We've released our supply of resources for you to use in your mahi alongside young people. So please - check them out, print them off and find out for yourself whether they can recharge your work with young people!
Host Your Own Community Hackathon
Community Hackathons are a magical way to bring together a diverse community to work on promising projects. We've found them so useful that we created a step-by-step guide to promoting, organising and hosting your own community hackathon!
Wellbeing Design Challenge
A wellbeing design challenge based around milk – it sounds strange, right! But this is one of our favourite sessions that we’ve run time and time again. If you want to introduce people to design thinking, this is a great place to start.
Relationship Building Sort Cards
Relationship-building is one of the foundations of effective facilitation. If you're not sure how to get people beyond the superficial “what do you do for work?" question, this Relationship Building Sort Card package could be what you need.
Creating Group Kawa (Culture): Ko Wai Au Worksheet
Think back to the last time you joined a new group of people. Perhaps you started a new job, turned up to a meetup group, or attended a training workshop. Did you have the opportunity to contribute to the culture and norms (the kawa) of the group from the outset...?
We recommend getting support as early as possible if you, or someone you know, are having a hard time with wellbeing or mental distress. Mental distress affects one in five New Zealanders each year and around half of us will experience distress at some time in our lives.
