Kerry Life Education was set up as a joint venture between South Kerry Development Partnership and Killarney Town Council. Research carried out by both groups, and others indicated rising levels of substance abuse in the area2 3, and this was a matter of serious concern. They looked at alternative methods of preventative education. One such programme was the Life Education system. It was first established in 1979 in Australia, and offered holistic health education and drug/alcohol misuse prevention programmes to children and young people. It was first introduced to the UK in 1986, and to Ireland in 1997. Over 3 million children in 15 countries now participate in Life Education.

A specific company was set up in February 2002 to bring the project to Kerry and, due to the physical capacity of one mobile classroom, visits to schools in the South and East of Kerry commenced on February 16th 2004, reaching 7,500 students annually.
The KLE is funded through the Regional Drugs Task Force, Local Authorities, and a fee from each school that is visited. In October 2007 the then Minister for State, Mr J Carey, asked if an evaluation of this KLE project could be done. The Dept Public Health HSE South (Cork) was
approached, and agreed that it could carry out this evaluation.

The Evaluation Report can be read or downloaded at the link this page.

A detailed description of the KLE Project can be found on www.kerrylifeeducation.com