Life Education Centres
Life Education (LEC) is the largest national children’s health education charity. Launched in the UK in 1987, the charity works directly with primary school children, their teachers and parents to help them gain the knowledge, skills and attitudes to make healthy lifestyle choices.
Topics covered include health and nutrition, legal and illegal drugs and life skills.
All activities is delivered through local organisations, bringing together schools, parents, local community groups, local statutory bodies and businesses to ensure that children receive consistent and positive messages to influence their decisions. LEC’s footprint covers about 50% of the UK reaching nearly 1 million children each year through 4000 primary schools.
More information about the charity can be found on the website at www.lifeeducation.org.uk
In October the government committed to making Personal Social and Health Education compulsory in all schools. This is likely to create a lot of opportunity and demand for Life Education.
The Trust has agreed to support LEC over a three year period building upon work already done in Tower Hamlets sponsored by the Lehman Brothers Foundation Europe. In this part of London many children live in come from deprived communities where the prevalence of smoking, drug and alcohol abuse and poor diet is high.
The wide ethnic spread in this area means there is a real challenge to establish the confidence of the varied communities to build effective and supportive partnerships and develop programmes which will build the confidence and life-skills of the children.
