Education is everything. For the children of refugees, migrants, or families from lower socio-economic backgrounds, having access to quality learning resources, and empathetic support to guide them through the hurdles they face, can be an important driver in how their lives will develop.

Teba Mazin knows this better than most. She arrived in Australia as a 13-year-old, her family escaping the violent Iraqi insurgency in 2011, and found herself in a Year 8 class, struggling to speak English or to understand the academic books on her desk. In Year 12, she was introduced to Happy Brain Education, a not-for-profit organisation offering tutoring and extra resources for young people in pressured circumstances. It gave her everything she needed, including a community.

Nine years later, Teba is chief executive officer of Happy Brain Education, having stayed involved after finishing school, as a volunteer mentor, in marketing and finance. She knows the impact the organisation can have on young lives. 

“In our team, we have a lot of people with lived experience,” she said. “We’ve gone through that journey and so we really understand and feel the challenges because we’ve all been through it ourselves. Our full executive team, from the chair to myself, to our head of ops and head of education, all come from refugee backgrounds.”

Happy Brain Education is now on a wider mission, to develop the HBE Academy, delivering high-quality academic support services for all Victorian VCE students, with the profits funding Happy Brain’s Equity Program, which continues the organisation’s core mission of closing the education gap for secondary students from refugee, migrant and lower socio-economic backgrounds. 

The Ross Trust is providing $120,000 over three years towards establishing and growing the academy, and its goal of driving academic results and sustainable income for Happy Brain.

Teba said building financial sustainability through the HBE Academy will help fund and extend the Equity Program, providing students with a comprehensive package of academic support – from tutoring and discussion boards to hundreds of videos, study notes and past exam questions. 

“It’s not like you just rock up to the Happy Brain class and that's it,” she said. “We’re actually building a long-term full comprehensive solution that really takes students from day one of term one right towards when they graduate and gives them access to all the resources that they need to be able to succeed in VCE and beyond.”

Happy Brain’s research within the education sector has highlighted the gap between resource availability in wealthier schools and under-represented schools. The focus is to bridge that divide.

“A good education is not only about who works the hardest,” Teba said. “It’s about who has access to these resources to be able to really succeed.”

The Happy Brain executive team has appreciated the advice and mentoring provided by the Ross Trust, as well as the long-term financial assistance, she said. “The Ross Trust understands that to make something meaningful and sustainable, you need time, and that’s what this funding is for us – three years’ stability to be able to build something meaningful and sustainable,” she said. “They’re taking a leap of faith on us and I’m confident we’ll be able to deliver.”

Read more about the work of Happy Brain Education