Every good story is rooted in the characters that make it up. For us, this meant creating a digital world of characters that our audience could connect with. We want children from communities everywhere to engage with our characters on their screens to learn something about life and discover something new about themselves.
Each of our characters already had their own personality embedded in our storytelling. However, it was important that they all have their own distinctive voice, something you’d recognize even with your eyes closed. To start, we were far from distinctive. As the founder of Life Heroes, I suddenly became an impromptu voice actor for a few months. There’s not much distinction when every character sounds a little bit like one person.
We even tried bringing on voice actors, ranging from friends and family to professionals and hobbyists. But this process became a scheduling nightmare, and as a young non-profit, it was impossible to afford the consistent work of professional voice actors.
Speaking of professionals, you can’t name a voice more iconic than Elmo. If you hear that squeaky, high-pitched tone, you know exactly who it is, the lovable red puppet we all grew up with. But the Elmo we know today wasn’t created overnight. The character first appeared on Sesame Street in the 1970s without a well-defined voice or personality. It wasn’t until 1986 that Kevin Clash, an American puppeteer and voice actor, gave Elmo his now-distinctive voice. It took Sesame Street 15 years to find the right sound.
With the rise of the internet and now the introduction of AI technology, a lot has changed since the ’70s. ElevenLabs, founded in 2022, has a mission to be “the voice of technology.” Their goal is to make interacting with computers as natural as talking to a person, bringing the world’s knowledge, stories and agents to life. For us, they did exactly that. They helped bring the Life Heroes Universe to life.
We connected with the amazing team at ElevenLabs at the perfect time, right as they were launching their Impact Partnership Program, a program aimed at partnering with nonprofits to provide free licenses for projects in healthcare, education and culture. ElevenLabs’ AI voice technology helped Life Heroes find voices for our beloved characters, voices we hope the world will come to love one day too.
Arty, Bizz, Natt, Vin, Saul, and Helen, the six main heroes at the forefront of the Life Heroes Universe, all finally had their own unique voices.
For a creative non-profit like ours, the impact was immeasurable. We watched our characters come to life, not just for us, but for the audiences we serve. We spoke to a student interested in the medical field who said, “I definitely see myself in Helen the most, but I noticed a small part of me in all the other heroes too.” That showed us our audience was truly starting to connect. Ultimately, when our audience sees these characters, we want them to see the world they live in and a part of themselves.
You can’t build a successful non-profit without thinking about cost. Your mission is always your primary focus, but in order to sustain your impact, how you drive that mission has to be cost-efficient. Our goal is to create online edutainment that children from every community can engage with and learn from. Figuring out how to do this affordably has been one of our biggest challenges, a challenge ElevenLabs helped us solve.
At first, we didn’t think this would be a major hurdle since our founder was already the primary creative force behind our mission. But we soon realized this meant sacrificing administrative duties like funding, partnerships and outreach in order to focus on creative work such as animating, character design and storytelling. We quickly learned that being cost-efficient isn’t just about money management; it’s also about time management.
ElevenLabs became a creative tool that saved us both. What used to take weeks and thousands of dollars to animate now took just a few days. This allowed our founder and team to dedicate more time to administrative growth and for the first time, our creative work didn’t have to suffer.
Our goal is to teach children about the world and inspire them to be anything they want to be. To make that impact, people have to actually see our content. And if you ask anyone in the media, the key to that is consistency.
With ElevenLabs, it became easier to produce content, and that directly increased our reach.
Since integrating ElevenLabs into our creative workflow, our reach skyrocketed.
That’s a 1,248% increase in just one year. To put it in perspective, we’d have to host over 182 workshops to reach that many people.
Here are some notable videos we created using ElevenLabs voices:
The Cognitive Triangle – Daily Affirmations
Saul, the social element hero of the Life Heroes Universe discusses the cognitive triangle and how daily affirmations can change the way we think.
Positive Self Talk is Important
Saul, the social element hero, talks about the power of positive self-talk and gives examples viewers can apply in their own lives.
Heroes Discuss Food and Policy
All six heroes join a recorded call to discuss food, an extension of our pop-up workshop created for the Detroit Food Policy Council annual summit. Each hero shares their perspective on food, creating six different ways to explore the topic.
Food and Policy Marketing Skit
Saul and Arty team up for a fun animated skit that sets the stage for the food and policy discussion.
Inspirational and Motivational Rap Series
Each hero freestyles verses inspired by their life element, blending motivation, inspiration and rhythm.
As a nonprofit, our main priority has always been to make an impact. But impact can mean many different things and it took time for us to understand what it meant for us.Hosting workshops, creating educational videos and forming partnerships were all impactful, but something was missing: storytelling.
The Life Heroes Universe is a creative world, but what exactly does that mean? A creative world needs characters, yes, but those characters also need stories. Stories shaped by their lives, their choices and their personalities.
We needed to dedicate time to develop and communicate our story. That meant giving our heroes experiences that made them who they are. This, in turn, gave our audience more opportunities to see themselves in those characters. We realized the power of using personality-driven storytelling to help people connect with our world on a deeper level. When people engage with our content, we want them to find a piece of the world and themselves in every experience.
To make an impact, you have to be able to rally communities. That’s especially true for a non-profit where volunteers are the lifeblood of impact.
In Year 1, our focus was on connecting with career heroes to create inspirational stories that offered kids representation not always found in their own communities. This year, we took that a step further by creating a new volunteer role, the Community Catalyst.
These are individuals who understand the power of connection. They’re passionate about networking and engaging with others in their field. Their natural enthusiasm drives them to cultivate communities of changemakers within their careers.
We successfully onboarded four volunteers this year and look forward to deepening our impact in underrepresented communities across the United States.
This year, the Life Heroes Universe had the incredible opportunity to extend its reach to Michigan. It all started when we attended a Black Tech Saturdays event. Their mission is to empower tech communities nationwide to drive economic growth, close the wealth gap and diversify the tech industry.
At that event, we connected with Animation Discovery Studio, whose mission is to empower the next generation of visual storytellers from underrepresented communities.
Through this partnership, we hosted a storytelling and animation workshop at the 2025 Digital Youth Empowerment Summit, reaching more than 1,000 students who attended the Youth Tech Fest. Together, we created an unforgettable experience for students rooted in creativity and storytelling.
We also hosted a creative workshop at the Detroit Food and Policy Council (DFPC) Annual Summit, which brought together more than 200 farmers, chefs, youth leaders, educators, policymakers, healthcare professionals, and community organizers to reimagine Detroit's food future. We saw this as a powerful opportunity to use storytelling to highlight the importance of nutritional awareness.
In our story, the Life Heroes travel to every corner of their universe and with that every planet offers a new food to try. After Arty eats something that makes them sick, the heroes design a food scanner that can detect harmful ingredients, a tool we can all use here on Earth. Through this story, we encouraged audiences to explore apps like Yuka, which help users make informed choices about the foods they consume.
As we close Year 2, we’re proud of how far we’ve come, from giving our heroes voices to amplifying our own as a nonprofit. ElevenLabs didn’t just save us time or money, they helped us find our voice, literally and figuratively. Through partnerships, storytelling, and media we’re on a mission to bring the Life Heroes Universe story to children everywhere.
