The Smith Family: Let’s Count

Children's education charity The Smith Family has expanded its Let's Count program with the launch of an innovative Facebook Messenger bot to help parents and families experiencing disadvantage support the mathematical learning of preschool-aged children. Developed by creative agency The Works, part of RXP Group, the social media tool complements The Smith Family's Let's Count program, which launched in 2009 and has helped more than 122,000 children aged 3 to 5 years learn numeracy concepts through play. Research shows that in their first year of school, one in four children who live in Australia’s most disadvantaged communities start school behind on literacy and numeracy. The Smith Family’s Let’s Count program has been developed to help close this educational divide. The new Messenger bot provides parents a series of prompts to use everyday objects and tasks to help children learn mathematical concepts such as time, shapes, sizes and weights. Douglas Nicol, strategy partner at The Works, said that using Facebook to develop the tool was important, as 70% of the target audience was already highly engaged on the Messenger platform.