Start Smart Stay Safe (S4) helps children and families to develop tools, skills, and resources to be resilient when faced with today’s challenges.

Resilience is the ability to face and cope with challenges in a way that promotes continued growth and well-being. It means you can get through the tough things in life, and bounce back, stronger than ever.

There are many things that make a person resilient:

• Internal factors: like good self-esteem, or an easy-going personality;
• External factors: like family support, groups/clubs you belong to, connections in your community.

Resilience can be taught, modelled and learned in a process that goes on for a lifetime. It’s a matter of teaching children the skills to overcome challenges today and thereby strengthen their ability to deal with other challenges in the future. Protecting children or solving problems for them is not, over the long term, always the best thing for them.