Legless and Blind founders Mike Rolls and Ben Pettingill talking to the students during their visit.
The Legless and Blind events last week at the Deniliquin Golf Club formed part of the Real Life Resilience Roadshow to Deniliquin.
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We wanted to share with you the fantastic collaboration between Deniliquin Mental Health Awareness Group (Deni MHAG), Channel 4 Change and all our schools in Deniliquin and surrounds.
On Wednesday, June 21 Deniliquin High Schools students attended a 90 minute interactive session presented by Legless and Blind’s Mike Rolls and Ben Pettingill.
These were presented in three sessions across the day.
On Thursday morning year 5 and 6 students from all local schools, including the small schools and Mathoura attended a two hour session with Mike and Ben at Deniliquin High School.
The sessions were well received with great feedback about the messaging focussing on four key areas students can use during challenging times in their lives:
•Build our team.
•Lean on your mates.
•Calculate your control.
•One step at a time.
Over 800 students received wrist bands with great messaging to keep printed with ‘Its’ OK to ask for help” with a QR code linked to the Kids Helpline, as well as “Help anywhere, anytime” with a QR code link to the Deni MHAG website helpline resources page.
Lourene Liebenberg, member of Deni MHAG said the events saw a significant rise in traffic to the Deni MHAG website.
“Knowing where and how to find help is important,” she said.
“In particular, the helpline page, and that is exactly what we were hoping to achieve,” she said.
“The Kids Helpline is an amazing 24/7 resource for kids, teens and young people, as well as for parents.
“The QR code for this was also on the wristbands.”
“Whilst schools and some P&C ‘s contributed some funding to these events, the presentations were also funded by the Channel 4 Change initiative - the charity fundraising arm of Deni MHAG.”
Fundraising has been helped by Brenda Norman who swims to raise awareness and funds for youth mental health initiatives in Deni and surrounds.
Brenda is currently in New York preparing for her 20 bridges swim on July 9.
The swim involves circumnavigating the 48.4km Manhattan island.
If successful, Brenda will accomplish the World Triple Crown of open water swimming.
Only 292 swimmers have achieved the Crown which involves swimming the English Channel, Catalina Channel and the 20 Bridges.
We wish Brenda well in yet another personal challenge and applaud her ongoing efforts to raise awareness and funds for Deni MHAG.
It enables us to continue the work we do in raising awareness of mental health and wellbeing in our community.
All funds donated to Channel 4 Change is used for local initiatives to support our youth in Deniliquin.
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