Snapshot
About The Client
Act for Kids is a not-for-profit organisation providing therapy and support to children and families who have experienced abuse or neglect. Across their work, they hold a clear conviction: the best protection is prevention. Their ‘Learn to Be Safe with Emmy and Friends’ program is the classroom expression of that conviction — a personal safety curriculum developed for Foundation through to Year 5 students, built on research, delivered by teachers, and trusted by schools across Australia.
The program already had everything going for it: a warm, relatable cast of characters, age-appropriate content sequenced across six year levels, and existing Activity Guides for every one of the 36 lessons. What it needed next was a digital upgrade — one that could put the Emmy and Friends experience onto the screens and whiteboards of today’s classrooms.
The Need
The existing Emmy and Friends materials were print-based. They were solid. But classrooms had moved on — interactive whiteboards, virtual delivery via Teams and Zoom, tablets in students’ hands — and the program needed to move with them.
The brief was clear: don’t reinvent the wheel. The content was good. The brand was trusted. The Activity Guides were the foundation. What Act for Kids needed was a partner who could take that existing material and bring it to life digitally — without watering it down, overcomplicating it for teachers, or losing the warmth of the Emmy and Friends world in the process.
The added complexity was scale. Six different year levels. Five to seven lessons each. Thirty-six lessons in total, each running 45 minutes. Every module needed to work for a teacher standing in front of a classroom, a teacher running a Teams session with students at home, and every scenario in between.
The Learning Solution
Hungry Minds built the Emmy and Friends digital suite in Chameleon Creator — six standalone interactive modules, one for each year level from Foundation to Year 5, each containing the full set of lessons for that grade.
The design approach was straightforward: make it easy for teachers, engaging for kids, and true to the Emmy and Friends brand. Every module was built to operate like a well-designed classroom presentation — teacher-controlled, visually consistent with existing program materials, and structured to follow the natural rhythm of a 45-minute lesson. In face-to-face settings, teachers run the content from their device and students interact through the whiteboard or teacher’s tablet. In virtual settings, the same modules work seamlessly through Teams or Zoom, with remote student access enabled where the platform allows.
The real lift was in the interactions. Rather than static slides with text to read aloud, each lesson was rebuilt around digital learning activities that do the heavy lifting: drag and drop sorting tasks, matching activities, knowledge checks, fill-in-the-blank questions, and scenario-based discussions that invite students to think, not just listen. Where the original Activity Guides had relied on teachers generating their own engagement, the digital modules baked it in.
Each lesson came with an accompanying teacher guide giving educators everything they needed to facilitate with confidence: lesson purpose, facilitation notes, discussion prompts, and clear activity instructions. No tech expertise required.
The Outcome
Act for Kids now has a fully digital, teacher-ready version of the Emmy and Friends program — six interactive modules covering every lesson from Foundation to Year 5, ready to run in any classroom in Australia.
The content is the same trusted program schools already know. The difference is in how it lands. Students who once sat through printed worksheets are now dragging, matching, discussing and engaging with material designed to hold their attention — and teachers who might have hesitated to run a personal safety program now have a structured, polished tool that makes the delivery straightforward.
The train-the-teacher program means adoption isn’t left to chance. The lesson guides mean no teacher has to improvise. And the digital format means the Emmy and Friends program can scale — to more classrooms, more year levels, more students — without Act for Kids having to start from scratch.
Emmy and Friends has always been built on the idea that safety knowledge, delivered well, can change a child’s life. These modules make sure more children get that chance.
The team
