By Pippa Gregory – GFS Great Yarmouth Young Womens Development Worker
The GFS Great Yarmouth team were out in force once again, this time to join a local high school in their quest to promote wellbeing.
As part of their Enrichment programme, Ormiston Denes Academy (Lowestoft) held an inclusive Pride Event in conjunction with the LGBT Project hosting numerous local agencies, such as the Terrance Higgins Trust, LGBT Project and Suffolk Police.
The aim of the event was to celebrate the diversity of love as well as acceptance and understanding. There was a very clear underlying purpose of the event – wellbeing – a hot topic within education! GFS Great Yarmouth had been invited to this event by the academy whilst attending a recent health and wellbeing event at Lowestoft College. We had been asked if we could bring our body casts along (from our 2016 Art Exhibition) and display our work surrounding body confidence and acceptance.
Our ‘mini exhibition’, consisted of a selection of the casts made by our young women along with quotes from our groups, body confidence statistics and information about the art project. The feedback was fantastic! One young woman said it was ‘inspirational’ and another was ‘thrilled’ that there were groups in the area like this.
We also spoke with a few former GFS women – they had attended the launch of the GFS Great Yarmouth nursery and even remembered the staff that attended. It was rewarding to hear the role GFS played in their lives and to discover what they are up to now.
Our stand was decked out in true GFS fashion with an array of information for the pupils to take away with them. Along with this information, we asked some of the young women who came to our stand to write positive messages to one another.
The messages were wonderful! We intend to display them in our office and encourage our young women to add to them (positivity breeds positivity). Which is exactly why we handed out affirmations to everyone who visited our stand; just a little message from GFS Great Yarmouth to remind the pupils that they should believe in themselves and learn to love who they are.
The event lasted around two and a half hours with 150+ pupils attending – a great opportunity to promote the organisation as well as our work in the area. The day was a great success and has provided us with the chance to work with the school and their ongoing enrichment programme in the future.