Lifehack Flourishing Fellowship
Lifehack, a national youth-wellbeing initiative in Aotearoa New Zealand, set out to strengthen mental health outcomes by equipping cross-sector practitioners with the skills to design and deliver systems-level interventions.
Motivation
Lifehack needed a holistic evaluation to understand whether the Flourishing Fellowship—their flagship program—was building the capacities, collaborations, and strategic alignment necessary for long-term sector change. To do this, they partnered with Thicket Labs, where this project was originally conceived and delivered by TLC founder Deepthi Welaratna. This case study reflects the work completed under Thicket branding, now shared as part of Tiny Little Cosmos’ portfolio of system-change, evaluation, and collaborative design capabilities.
Evaluation activities included creating a workshop to gather fellow input on evaluation model and fielding a series of six feedback surveys. Study insights were reported publicly and used to inform long-term impact evaluation reporting to public agencies funding the program.
Approach
We designed a multi-layered evaluation grounded in systems thinking, participatory design, and collective impact principles. Our work included:
Creating a Workshop for Lifehack to Co-Design the Evaluation Framework With Its Fellows
We facilitated an envisioning workshop where Fellows identified key systemic factors affecting youth wellbeing and co-created the criteria that would anchor the evaluation. This enabled the program to be assessed through its own values and lived realities rather than external metrics.
Mixed-Method Data Collection & Synthesis
We captured and analyzed rich qualitative and quantitative data that surfaced emotional landscapes, relationship dynamics, and collective patterns often invisible in traditional program evaluations. Quick, iterative monitoring surveys kept the feedback loop active throughout the Fellowship.
Read the full report and read the blog post co-written by Lifehack HQ and Thicket Labs about the evaluation program.
“[The evaluation program] has been great when it comes to creating clarity around what we’re looking to learn — and what indicators might help us assess whether we’re on track.”
System Change Analysis
We assessed the ways Fellows’ projects and collaborations contributed to broader systemic shifts—across institutions, service ecosystems, and local communities. This included mapping alignments between individual initiatives and Lifehack’s long-term vision for youth wellbeing.
Outcomes
Strengthened Collaborative Capacity
Fellows demonstrated meaningful growth in their ability to co-design, partner across sectors, and lead systemic interventions—skills that are particularly hard to capture without a participatory evaluation design.
Evidence of Systemic Influence
The evaluation documented how diverse projects—when supported by shared frameworks and relational infrastructure—can move an entire sector toward more coherent, aligned youth wellbeing strategies.
Clear Strategic Alignment
Fellows’ initiatives showed strong alignment with Lifehack’s wellbeing goals, validating the Fellowship’s theory of change and strengthening the case for continued investment.
A Blueprint for Future Social Impact Measurement
Our methods demonstrated how collaborative intelligence tools, participatory evaluation, and systems thinking can be scaled to other social impact contexts, creating more insightful and adaptive measurement practices.
Leadership & Impact
This work—designed and delivered under the Thicket Labs banner—showcases our track record of leadership in systems change, collective impact, and participatory evaluation. The project combined facilitation, sensemaking, and advanced data synthesis to help a national initiative tell a fuller story of its impact.
As Tiny Little Cosmos, this case study represents the kind of strategic, collaborative, future-oriented work we continue to champion: helping organizations understand their ecosystems, unlock shared learning, and design pathways toward meaningful social change.
