Back in 2020, the global Covid-19 pandemic forced children's safety-education charity Safewise to shut its physical centres. But its founders had no idea the situation would help them open a new door – to opportunity, growth, and improved learning outcomes. Safewise was reimagined as 360 Skills for Life. 

360 Skills for Life is a partnership-led social enterprise, providing scenario-based educational experiences through an immersive virtual-reality world: Skill City. Skill City offers a safe environment for children to assess and react to situational risk, learning critical skills in the process. 

Through six scenarios and 18 missions, all relevant to their real lives, children are empowered to consider dangers and make decisions, which then affect the flow of their digital story. There are no right or wrong answers throughout the scenarios, just varying levels of concern to be pondered. So, children discover how to assess risk independently on an individual, situational basis rather than learning set actions or behaviours – enforcing a greater understanding and better knowledge retention. 

In the first term following launch, we successfully onboarded 86 schools, who are now confidently using Skill City. And seeing the benefits. We're currently working to onboard a further 158 schools in Northern Ireland and Southwest England, giving them fully funded access. Conversations are also taking place in Wales and Scotland about rollout there. But the best result? Children are becoming better prepared for tomorrow, today – and having fun while they're at it.