In the news

• posted by The Helmsman Project |
• category: About The Helmsman Project 

It's been an exciting month for The Helmsman Project, all centred around the launch of our 2022 programs.

• posted by The Helmsman Project |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Community, Research 

The COVID-19 pandemic changed, altered and disturbed almost every aspect of our lives. While the impact of COVID-19 hit all of us in some way there has been a disproportionate impact on certain members of Australian society including young people.

• posted by The Helmsman Project |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Community

In July 2021, The Helmsman Project received an email from Sara Wanner, a teacher from British Columbia, Canada, requesting to deliver our Wellbeing Program to her students. This marked the beginning of The Helmsman Project going international! 

• posted by Kim Larochelle |
• category: About The Helmsman Project 

The school year has started. 2022 is an extra special one for our family as our eldest son makes his debut in formal education. As many parents would experience at this stage of life, a whole new level of excitement and anxiety has kicked in...

• posted by Kim Larochelle |
• category: About The Helmsman Project 

As an organisation that focuses on positive psychology and growth mindset, the headline of this article might come as a surprise. We’re so used to hearing or saying “think positive” - how could a negative frame of mind ever be helpful?

• posted by The Helmsman Project |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Research 

What is it about The Helmsman Project programs that sets us apart from the others? What makes our programs unique? For one, it is our considerate combination of challenges. The other aspect that sets us apart is our research. 

• posted by Kim Larochelle |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Community

"Amongst the latest Covid numbers, climate change updates and all the bad news, it can be pretty hard to pop our head above the surface and get a glimpse of what the future might look like."

• posted by Kim Larochelle |
• category: About The Helmsman Project 

It’s been eight years since my first meeting with Andrew (co-founder), and The Helmsman Project has empowered over 1,000 young people to develop fundamental life skills. Many of these young people have had their life trajectory completely turned around. I am proud and humbled to have been part of their journey with our team. 

• posted by The Helmsman Project |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Community

Supporting young people's mental health and wellbeing has never been more important than now. Do you know a school that needs support in providing wellbeing initiatives to its students? 

• posted by The Helmsman Project |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Community, Life skills 

In order to truly understand the impact of our wellbeing program, we share with you a handful of student responses...

• posted by The Helmsman Project |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Community

We are very excited to announce the renewed support of Endeavour Energy as a funding partner of The Helmsman Project.

• posted by The Helmsman Project |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Community, Fundraising 

We are very excited to announce the renewed support of Danks Trust as funding partner of The Helmsman Project.

• posted by Kim Larochelle |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Community

Last week was National Volunteer Week, a time to stop and share a huge thank you to all of our volunteers.

• posted by Kim Larochelle |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Coaching , Community

After 12 months of design and collaboration, our new program came to life...

• posted by The Helmsman Project |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Community

Are you a photographer or videographer? Or both? We're looking for a talented volunteer to help us capture photos and videos of our new Wellbeing and Community Leadership program.

• posted by The Helmsman Project |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Coaching , Community

With great pride we introduce to you our new facilitators. These facilitators will run our new program, set to launch in a matter of weeks.

• posted by Kim Larochelle |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Research 

This case study provides an overview of the collaborative process our team undertook with partner schools over the last 12 months, and reflections on the hurdles and support we experienced as we embarked on this human-centered design project.

• posted by Kim Larochelle |
• category: About The Helmsman Project 

Kim reflects on her family as a source of inspiration for creativity and ingenuity. When resources are scarce, the greatest ingenuity and innovations can arise.

• posted by Belinda Robinson |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Coaching , Community

Belinda Robinson joined our team of professional coaches in 2020. She reflects on her first coaching experience on our programs, and the unique impact Covid-19 had on her experience.

• posted by The Helmsman Project |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Coaching , Research 

The Helmsman Project team has been very busy this year working on a human-centred design project in collaboration with high school partners to help us test and evaluate new potential offerings to address key challenges schools face in supporting young people. 

• posted by The Helmsman Project |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Adventure education , Coaching 

Our program offers a blend of developmental coaching and adventure education targeted towards young people who are at risk of not realising their full potential.

• posted by Kim Larochelle |
• category: About The Helmsman Project 

In psychology, resilience is the capacity to bounce back from adversity, conflict, and failure or even positive events, progress, and increased responsibility. For our team, resilience is three things: welcome challenges, bounce back and be courageous.

• posted by The Helmsman Project |
• category: About The Helmsman Project 

Wednesday, 22 July marked seven years of The Helmsman Project delivering life-changing programs to young people. We’ve come a long way since 2013 and while many aspects of our organisation have changed and grown over the years, we are proud to stick by the same mission: to help young people develop the skills and perspective to set goals, overcome setbacks, persevere and thrive.  

• posted by The Helmsman Project |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Coaching 

Right now, some students are doing it tough. And as we haven't been able to set foot in our partner schools since March, we've developed an initiative to provide our much needed support to those students in need. 

• posted by Kim Larochelle |
• category: About The Helmsman Project 

One of our values at The Helmsman Project is self-regulation, which is also a life skill we help our young participants develop and is a critical leadership tool.

• posted by Kim Larochelle |
• category: About The Helmsman Project 

Our CEO Kim Larochelle shares how the value 'hope' helps frame her leadership and management strategies.

• posted by Matthew Robinson |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Coaching , Community

COVID 19 has had and is continuing to have a significant and substantial impact on the education of billions of students around the globe. Schools have been closed and teachers have had to develop remote educational experiences and content, almost overnight, using new and at times unfamiliar online technologies.

• posted by Kim Larochelle |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Community

As the reality of self-isolation, social distancing and home schooling sets in, I can’t help myself but to think that some positive - dare I say, great - things will come out of this dire situation.

• posted by Matt Robinson |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Coaching , Community, Life skills 

Our organisation has been working with young people for nearly seven years, supporting them to maintain a positive wellbeing, and we would like to offer families some of our expert knowledge in this space.

• posted by Kim Larochelle |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Community, Life skills 

As the world faces unprecedented events due to coronavirus, 'business as usual' is disrupted. Appreciative Inquiry is a strengths-based leadership technique to engage in meaningful, positive conversations in support of successful change initiatives.

• posted by Kim Larochelle |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Coaching , Community, Fundraising , Research 

As we welcome a new year, Kim gives an overview on how The Helmsman Project is kickstarting 2020.

• posted by The Helmsman Project |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Adventure education , Coaching , Community, Life skills 

On Wednesday 4 December, The Helmsman Project celebrated 63 young people from schools across Western Sydney completing our program. The Helmsman Project graduation is a highly anticipated event. It gives everyone an opportunity to hear directly from the students the impact the program has had on them.

• posted by Kim Larochelle |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Community, Fundraising 

As we farewell another year, the time is ripe to take stock on where we are...

• posted by Kim Larochelle |
• category: About The Helmsman Project 

We are extremely privileged at The Helmsman Project to have a close community of truly remarkable individuals supporting our work. One of these is Dr Sean O’Connor...

• posted by Zena Dabaja |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Community

Zena shares her reflection on the impact The Helmsman Project has not only on the participants, but the surrounding community.

• posted by Tonnie Slater |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Community

• posted by The Helmsman Project |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Community

The Helmsman Project Youth Board was given the opportunity to run a two-hour workshop with 60 professionals from Macquarie Bank global offices.

• posted by The Helmsman Project |
• category: About The Helmsman Project 

The Helmsman Project started as a vision to help young people achieve their potential and make a difference in the world. This vision was brought into being through the passion and dedication of a team of people committed to this idea. Now, six years on, we know our program makes a difference in the lives of our participants not only because that’s what our research tells us, but most importantly, because our graduates tell us it does.

• posted by The Helmsman Project |
• category: About The Helmsman Project 

Monday 22 July marked six years since the launch of our very first Helmsman Project program and we would like to take this opportunity to reflect on our journey.

• posted by Kim Larochelle |
• category: About The Helmsman Project 

Kim outlines The Helmsman Project's key focuses underpinning the goals of scale and growth.

• posted by Kim Larochelle |
• category: About The Helmsman Project 

Kim addresses the challenges faced by charities in Australia, touching on how The Helmsman Project manages these and the important role of strategy. 

• posted by Robert Milne |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Community

In my first week at The Helmsman Project I was lucky to visit the schools and meet the students enrolled in our programs. One of the highlights of The Helmsman Project’s program is the community projects which students plan and commit to once the program concludes....

• posted by Kim Larochelle |
• category: About The Helmsman Project 

This month, The Helmsman Project turns five - an achievement that would not have been possible without the generosity and commitment of many…

• posted by Kim Larochelle |
• category: About The Helmsman Project 

Innovation and growth can only happen when the client's needs or desires are understood. With this thought in mind and in line with our aspiration to continue to impact the lives of our graduates, we recently launched a new and exciting initiative...

• posted by Kim Larochelle |
• category: About The Helmsman Project 

We have recently held our fourth annual charity dinner, presented at The Funding Network’s Macquarie Foundation event and launched our 10th wave of programs. Amongst all this, we have developed, refined and launched a five-year strategy to support The Helmsman Project to grow and prosper into the future...

• posted by Sam Evans |
• category: About The Helmsman Project 

This year is The Helmsman Project’s fifth anniversary and our organisation has seen many changes as it continues to evolve and develop further into new programs and opportunities. We have seen changes in management, staff, and programs, coupled with increased corporate sponsorship. Most importantly, we have witnessed vast changes in our most recent cohort of graduates.

• posted by The Helmsman Project |
• category: About The Helmsman Project 

We are very excited to be launching a brand new opportunity for graduates of our programs: The Helmsman Project youth board.

• posted by Kim Larochelle |
• category: About The Helmsman Project 

Innovation is at the heart of The Helmsman Project. In line with this focus, we recently held a panel discussion on ‘Innovation in the workplace’ featuring three world leaders in technology: Atlassian, Amazon Web Services and Rackspace. It might be surprising to hear that the main topic discussed wasn't technology...

• posted by Kim Larochelle |
• category: About The Helmsman Project 

The Helmsman Project celebrated four years of operations last month, a milestone to which more than 120 volunteers have contributed and which has impacted just over 300 young lives. It has been no small feat - hope, self-regulation and resilience have been essential ingredients to our progress.

• posted by Dr Michael Cavanagh |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Life skills 

The Helmsman Project is an innovative blend of developmental coaching and adventure education targeted toward Year 9 students who are at risk of not fulfilling their potential. At its essence, the program seeks to help the students take bigger perspectives on themselves, others and the world. By doing this we help them build hope, self-regulation and resilience.

• posted by The Helmsman Project |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Adventure education , Life skills 

According to some researchers, self-regulation is one of the most important factors for encouraging academic engagement and preventing risky behaviour. While this is a skill that is important in every stage of life, it is particularly important for young people who are making critical decisions about their futures.

• posted by The Helmsman Project |
• category: About The Helmsman Project , Adventure education , Life skills 

For those who aren’t familiar with the word ‘helmsman’ it can be a little bit of a tongue twister. The ‘helm’ is what steers a ship, usually it’s a wheel. The ‘helmsman’ is the person in charge of steering the ship. He or she guides the rest of the crew to reach their destination.