Making good things happen.

Make it Happen is a Media on Mars initiative designed to help ensure good projects get off the ground. We noticed that important social and environmental change projects often lack the strategic planning needed to ensure their success. In response, we developed a proactive approach to Make it Happen.

We use our experience and skills as communicators and strategists to support organisations to make sure vital projects become realities. Using a co-design approach, we work with organisations and stakeholders at the genesis of their projects, where we assist with strategy, design thinking and funding support.

The Home Hub

The Home Hub is an online platform that advertises safe and affordable housing. It allows landlords and housing providers to list properties easily, and people to apply for safe, secure homes quickly.
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In our current housing system, eligible applicants can wait up to eight years to get into suitable housing. In WA, more than 60,000 households are in need of an affordable home. Yet, despite the overwhelming need for housing, 1 in 6 homes nationally remain underutilised.

The Home Hub recently launched the Homes for Good initiative; a call to action for anyone with an empty property to register it as available for people who need affordable housing. The initiative supports a housing-first approach, connecting people who have vacant homes with people who can’t afford to pay full rent in the private market.

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Naloxone

Naloxone is a medication that reverses an opioid overdose. It is safe, effective and does not increase drug use or risk taking behaviour. However, many doctors and pharmacists do not feel comfortable to distribute and promote Naloxone, fearing that it implies people are addicts. Read more

Currently Naloxone is available on prescription and over-the-counter. In 2020, the Commonwealth Department of Health committed $10 million to the distribution of Naloxone in WA, NSW and SA. The funding was for the disbursement of the drug itself, but there was nothing allocated to marketing or an awareness campaign about the benefits of Naloxone. As a result, the uptake has been poor.

The School of Pharmacy at Curtin University realised there was a lot of misinformation and resistance to the release of Naloxone. Curtin approached Media on Mars to undertake a strategy and communications project to determine the barriers to distribution and work out how to raise awareness amongst GPs and pharmacists. Initial strategy work and a promotional video has been created, with a view to attract further funding for a comprehensive awareness campaign.

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Kids on Country

Kids on Country is an Aboriginal youth engagement program facilitated by Millennium Kids. The project takes young Indigenous people and elders out on Country for positive education and leadership programs. The program has been running for over 5 years in the Goldfields and has seen enormous success in building stronger relationships and engagement with young people and the wider community.

Media on Mars assisted Millennium Kids to effectively tell the Kids on Country story, with a view to securing funding to continue the program. We were successful in this mission; sharing the Kids on Country story in a visually and engaging way, and showcasing the impact to funding partners has seen the program achieve funding for another four years.

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The Centre for Accessibility

Media on Mars frequently partners with educational institutes and government departments, and we regularly found ourselves addressing accessibility compliance in tenders. Although the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC, 2014) states that all web content should be accessible, there remains a significant lack of awareness among mainstream organisations as to the need to implement the WCAG 2.0 standard. Read more

We saw the opportunity for promoting digital accessibility, engaging users and spreading the message to a wider mainstream audience. The Centre for Accessibility is our collaborative answer to the accessibility problem. Created in partnership with DADAA and Dr. Scott Hollier and funded in part by an ILC grant from Disability Services, Department of Communities, the Centre for Accessibility was officially launched in June 2018.

Media on Mars developed a communication strategy that promotes accessibility as being about more than compliance. Accessibility is about people. We designed and developed the Centre for Accessibility website and developed a marketing campaign that puts people at the fore. The campaign aims to spread the accessibility message to a wider mainstream audience, as well as engaging accessibility specialists and people living with disability.

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Access the Centre

NuthaWay

NuthaWay is an Indigenous youth leadership program working to strengthen relationships between young people, their communities and the Police. Nutha Way champions the voices of Indigenous young people across WA, and asks about their ideas for helping resolve the big issues and facilitating change. Read more

Through the Millennium Kids’ Skills for Life process — and with a special focus on co-design — Nutha Way is empowering young people to address issues affecting their communities.

The leadership teams facilitate the processes with communities to ensure that solutions come from within the communities themselves. Working like this, Nutha Way delivers culturally appropriate strategies to increase positive interaction in the community, build better relationships with Police.

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Millennium Kids

Millennium Kids is a non-government organisation empowering young people to be active and aware in the environment. The Millennium Kids processes allow young people to identify environmental issues and look at the opportunities to solve these problems, consulting with stakeholders and learning new skills along the way. Read more

Media on Mars has been assisting Millennium Kids to turn their ideas into reality. The latest venture is a reusable bag stand that encourages shoppers to use and return cloth bags. Their pitch to SUEZ Waste Management resulted in funding for two prototypes. Mars assisted Millennium Kids to turn their ideas into a working prototype, a video and a pitch to IGA, local councils and local shops. Once the prototype has been tested Millennium Kids hopes to introduce the stands to as many other independent stores as possible.

“The ‘Make it Happen’ approach that Media on Mars uses not only gave us confidence in our project but it offered a range of perspectives that we may not have considered otherwise. It feels like a partnership; a team of people working to the same end, and allows us to exchange open dialogue, ideas and information.”
— Catrina-Luz Aniere, CEO Millennium Kids Inc

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See their work

Imagined Futures

Studies have found that young people who leave school early are at greater risk of experiencing long-term unemployment, which can lead to many other risk factors including social exclusion, welfare dependence, reduced life satisfaction and mental health problems. Imagined Futures has been working with at risk young people since 2014 with the aim of keeping vulnerable kids engaged in education. Read more

Imagined Futures has been funded through a combination of state government grants and member contributions, however further funding was required to ensure the ongoing sustainability of their work. Media on Mars helped develop a suite of photography, program video, an elevated brand and a campaign for attracting funding. We helped organise a stakeholder event to share the work of Imagined Futures and promote their collective impact approach.

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Visit Imagined Futures’ Pledge Page

The SECCA App

SECCA is a non-profit organisation designed to support people with disabilities in their efforts to learn about human relationships, sexuality and sexual health. Media on Mars developed a new identity and website for SECCA, plus a range of collateral including business cards and stationery, brochures, videos, photography, workshop sheets and email marketing templates. Read more

The largest and most complex of SECCA projects has been the SECCA App. Over three years of collaboration, research, scoping with stakeholders and extensive user testing was conducted before any commitment to final design. Based on this research and continued close consultation with SECCA, Media on Mars developed several interactive prototypes to test and refine user experience and functionality of the app. An illustrator at Media on Mars expanded on the original 200 tiles to create an extensive collection of over 1800 illustrations and 350 photographs.

The SECCA App is a free resource used in education, medical, allied health and justice settings, providing lessons for sexuality education and protective behaviours. The app is the first of its kind that teaches and communicates early and advanced concepts about human relationships and sexuality for people of all ages and abilities, their families and carers.

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Learn about the SECCA App or visit SECCA’s website

Plastic Free July

Plastic Free July is a global movement that helps people be part of the solution to plastic pollution. The Plastic Free July movement has inspired over 250 million participants in 177 countries. From humble beginnings in 2011, the award-winning Plastic Free July campaign has grown to be one of the most influential behaviour change campaigns in WA. Read more

Media on Mars assisted Plastic Free July with their communications planning for the 2019 campaign as they moved towards funding applications with the Department of Environment and Lottery West. We worked closely with Rebecca in the early stages of these funding applications to ensure that the project planning and budget were well designed and thought through to incorporate strategy, user experience research and an adequate communications and reporting budget’s. Once the project started we worked with the Plastic Free July team and behaviour change consultant – Colin Ashton Graham to design sophisticated, measurable behaviour change campaign. Click here to view the Impact Statement for the Plastic Free July Campaign.

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Visit Plastic Free July