Why we exist
Because the stories we inherit become the lives we live.
Domestic violence is not inevitable. It is the product of learned attitudes, inherited narratives, and a persistent failure to invest in prevention. We exist to change that.
What is relationship literacy?
Relationship literacy is the ability to recognise, understand, and build healthy relationships.
It includes understanding respect, communication, boundaries, emotional maturity, accountability, consent, conflict resolution, and the behaviours that contribute to safe, healthy, and fulfilling relationships.
Relationship literacy also helps people recognise unhealthy patterns — manipulation, coercive control, emotional abuse, and other behaviours that can quietly undermine wellbeing long before they escalate.
Just as we teach financial literacy and health literacy, relationship literacy equips people with the knowledge and skills to make informed choices throughout their lives.
At He Is Not Your Project, we believe relationship literacy is one of the most important life skills we can teach — because knowledge has the power to prevent harm, strengthen relationships, and create healthier communities.
The stories we inherit
Violence doesn't begin with a fist. It begins with a story.
Every child grows up absorbing stories about relationships — what love looks like, what conflict means, who holds power and who yields it. These stories come from families, from peers, from media, from culture. Most of the time, they are never named or examined. They are simply absorbed.
Some of those stories are healthy. Many are not. And when the stories we inherit tell us that jealousy is love, that control is care, that silence is safety — we carry those stories into our adult relationships, often without ever questioning them.
This is not a failure of individual character. It is a failure of education. We have never systematically taught young people how to recognise the difference between a relationship that is safe and one that is not. We have never given them the language to name what they are experiencing. We have never built the kind of literacy that would allow them to choose differently.
He Is Not Your Project exists because that gap is not acceptable. Because the stories we inherit do not have to be the stories we live.
"The stories we inherit do not have to be the stories we live."
Why education matters
The most powerful prevention tool we have is a classroom.
The evidence is clear: early, sustained, relationship literacy education reduces the attitudes and behaviours that drive domestic violence. Yet it remains inconsistently delivered, inadequately resourced, and poorly understood across Australian schools.
Attitudes form early
Research consistently shows that attitudes toward gender, power, and relationships are formed in childhood and adolescence. Intervening early — before patterns are entrenched — is far more effective than attempting to change adult behaviour after harm has occurred.
Knowledge changes behaviour
Young people who receive quality relationship literacy education are more likely to recognise unhealthy dynamics, less likely to accept controlling behaviour as normal, and more likely to seek help when they need it. The evidence base for this is robust and growing.
Educators are on the front line
Teachers and school counsellors are often the first adults outside the family to notice signs of harm. When they have the knowledge, language, and confidence to respond — and the curriculum tools to build literacy proactively — they become one of the most powerful forces for prevention we have.
Schools reach everyone
Unlike community programs or opt-in services, schools provide universal access to young people across all demographics. A school-based approach to relationship literacy is the only way to reach the scale of change that prevention requires.
Why prevention matters
We cannot crisis-service our way out of a prevention problem.
Australia spends billions of dollars each year responding to domestic violence — in hospitals, courts, police services, emergency housing, and crisis support. These services are essential. But they are not enough, and they never will be.
$26 billion
The estimated annual cost of domestic violence to the Australian economy
— KPMG, 2016
1 in 4
Women in Australia experience intimate partner violence in their lifetime
— ABS Personal Safety Survey, 2023
1 woman
Is killed by a current or former partner every 9 days in Australia
— Counting Dead Women Australia, 2024
Crisis services respond to harm that has already occurred. They are vital — but they are the last line of defence, not the first. A genuine commitment to ending domestic violence requires us to invest in prevention with the same urgency and resourcing we bring to crisis response.
Prevention means changing the conditions that allow violence to occur in the first place. It means shifting the social norms, the attitudes, and the knowledge gaps that make violence possible. It means going upstream — to schools, to communities, to the stories we tell young people about what relationships should look like.
That is where He Is Not Your Project works. Not because crisis services don't matter — they do, profoundly — but because prevention is the only path to a future where they are needed less.
See how we respond to this need.
Explore our Relationship Literacy Framework — the evidence-based foundation for all our work.