90% of young Australian students want to help others

At Resilient Youth we have an unmatched dataset on Australia’s youth. We have surveyed approximately 180,000 students across the country!

Our data gives us countless insights into young people — over 800 schools around Australia use the data to inform their wellbeing and resilience building strategies.

We would like to share with you an insight from our data that made us smile:

90% of all Australian students (grades 3-12) surveyed want to help others

We often hear about the alarming statistics in our young people, so it’s nice to take notice of something positive. And when 90% of students in grades 3 through 12 want to help others, that’s worth sharing!

Further data around helping others shows that overall, female students are more likely to want to help others than male students are (93% vs 86%).

We also found that more primary school students want to help than Secondary school students.

Grades 3-6: 95%

Grades 7-9: 88%

Grades 10-12: 87%

Helping makes us happy

Helping others doesn’t just help others. We can all benefit from the act of helping too. While that may not be the motivator to reach out and help someone, it is certainly a nice perk!

A 2012 study found that giving actually makes children happier than receiving, and suggested that resilience and stress management are also enhanced by the act of helping others.

Although the figures show that children are doing lots of helping already, encourage children to help by role modeling helpful behaviours.

Help young people help

Start by engaging students in a conversation about how they may want to help others.

Helping others could take place within the school setting and among their peers, or outside of school within the broader community.

Our Students Create the Future project is designed to encourage students to collaborate to help others. This may be an approach for your school to explore.

The Resilience Survey is the number one way to gain insight into your students’ views on helping others. In fact, it’s an incredible starting point for everything you do as a school or group for young people. For more information about it, click here.

Browse our case studies to see what other schools have achieved in their schools and communities through Students Create the Future and the Resilience Survey.