Swisse National Wellbeing Challenge: Young Innovators Shaping the Future of Wellbeing

More than 1,700 young people participated in the 2021 CIC Beyond Wellbeing Challenge, creating new and bold ideas to reshape their school communities and tackle wellbeing challenges that affect all Australians.

Developing Innovative Solutions

The Challenge, developed alongside Suggest it (Si) and with partners Swisse and One in Five, tapped into the imagination and ingenuity of students, helping them create more than 200 ideas for services, programs, and products to enrich the lives of those around them.

Working in teams of 2-5, students followed a four-step design process:

1. Discover new insights about wellbeing in their school community.
2. Generate innovative ideas.
3. Develop prototypes to demonstrate how these ideas would work in their schools.
4. Promote their ideas to the community.

All the ideas were showcased in a national campaign, with schools supported to implement ideas that make a difference.

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Six brilliant ideas were deemed the winners of the Challenge:

• Mindcess: A Year 6 team from Brighton Grammar School developed Mindcess, a program to implement mindfulness practices for students during recess, tapping into the growing recognition of mindfulness and meditation for mental wellbeing.  
• CounsellorMeet: Year 8 students from Bradford College in the ACT developed an idea for an app to provide immediate counselling support to students through text, call, or video chat, minimising waiting times for counsellor responses.
• Around the World Challenge: This challenge invites teams to complete a certain amount of exercise across the week, corresponding with a distance travelled across the world. When targets are achieved, the team "arrives" in a region of the world and learns wellbeing tips from that culture, participating in popular wellbeing activities from that region (e.g., 20 minutes of yoga).
• 'Love Yourself' - A Positive Picture Book: Year 10 students from Ballarat Grammar developed this idea to address body positivity concerns. The team is developing key themes and messaging for a picture book to reinforce to young people that they are beautiful in every single way.
• Cupcake Compliments: Ava and Naomi at Mater Maria Catholic College designed cupcakes with messages of positive affirmation on the icing—a delicious cupcake and a reminder to be proud of who you are.
• Teenage Teachers: Ava, Nat, and Xander designed Teenage Teachers to empower teenagers to teach other young people about mental health and awareness. Participants learn from their peers and connect with one another on wellbeing strategies and resources.

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Support and Collaboration

The challenge was supported by Swisse, who hosted two teams at their offices to help bring their ideas to life. The teams worked with Swisse team members (including a nutritionist, content creator, brand manager, and copywriter) to test and refine their ideas.

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"We are delighted to support the Crazy Ideas College and this school's initiative of putting the future of wellbeing into the brilliant young minds of students. The impact of the pandemic on our health has been significant for all groups in society but perhaps none more so than our school children."

Nick Mann, Swisse ANZ Managing Director

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"Resources are brilliant... seriously. Teachers love it. We haven't seen anything like it before!"

Duncan Wise, Principal, Blackburn Lake Primary School

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