40 uplifting pictures as Portadown College wellbeing fair encourages pupils to ‘get active’ and ‘give’

The event itself was a wonderful experience for all involved. It was held in both the assembly hall and the gym, with each hall full of stalls and students. It was so crammed that it was hard to even get up to a stall or hear yourself think.

The chaos was worth it, however, because if you stayed behind long enough for the masses to go off to get their lunches, you got to have a bit of a quieter moment to peruse the stands and see what was on offer.

There were lots of charities in attendance as well as sports clubs; some looking for volunteers, some looking to offer help.

A few stalls stood out to me in particular including Volunteer Now, which allows you to enter your postcode and be directed to nearby volunteering opportunities easily. Links counselling service, which provides the school counselling in Portadown College and is known for being very beneficial to its participants was also of interest to me.

The big standout was Habitat For Humanity, which was offering a volunteer trip to Romania as their main draw. Habitat For Humanity is a charity organisation which focuses largely on building and improving affordable housing, offer free training programs to those preparing for homeownership, and they advocate strongly for fair housing policies. At the fair specifically they were offering two of their programmes: the trip to Romania, and volunteering at their ReStore low-cost DIY shops.

It was both amazing and inspiring to see all of these opportunities for students. Sometimes it can be overwhelming trying to find these kinds of opportunities out in the wild, so it was very beneficial to have so many all in one place for us to walk around and ask questions. It was very informative to stop and have chats with the people behind the stalls, who were wonderfully helpful and eager to share about their organisations.

Students had lots of praise for the fair. Carys in Year 12 enjoyed looking at the mental wellness stalls such as Links and Action Mental Health (a charity which focuses on enhancing the quality of life of people with mental health needs or learning disabilities), while her classmate James was impressed by all of the volunteering opportunities that supported the arts.

One of the main attractions at each stall was the amount of merch the organisations had brought with them. All afternoon, bright pink sunglasses could be seen, originating from Bleary YFC! Other stalls tempted students with sweets, with one stand featuring a massive tub of Haribo front and centre of their table. However, the merch wasn’t the only thing to catch students’ eyes. At the front of the assembly hall were rowing machines, allowing a level of interactivity that kept students engaged and kept them coming over to see what was going on, which allowed the people running the Portadown Rowing Club stall to promote their organisation.

The bookworms also had opportunities that attracted them, as in attendance were the Talking Newspaper and NI Library. Mischa, a Year 14, was drawn in by the Talking Newspaper, designed for visually impaired people. Emma, also in Year 14, was drawn in by NI Library opportunities such as Manga Cons and author talks in our local libraries.

Kamile summed it up: “It’s generally difficult to find any opportunities local to us or opportunities that allow us to support communities that are impacted by ethical issues and I have found this fair handy as a step towards finding these opportunities.”

It’s incredible to see the school providing the students with such a varied and full range of opportunities, and it definitely has helped a lot of students find even just one thing that they are interested in signing up for or even just looking deeper into. It was wonderful to have these opportunities to explore the five steps to wellbeing as well raising awareness in the students of how to be their best selves.