Big Health Challenge 2017

28th June saw the final of the 2017 Big Health Challenge. This year the focus was resilience and students were initially engaged through a ‘Survive or Thrive’ island activity, inspired by this year’s theme for Mental Health Awareness Week. Pupils were then challenged to research, design and implement an initiative or create a resource which would increase resilience amongst pupils in their school. Seven schools took part in the final, addressing issues from exam stress to mindfulness and academic resilience. The standard of work and consideration shown by the pupils when selecting their focus was incredibly impressive and choosing a winner was extremely difficult. However, in the end the Healthy Schools panel selected Whalley Range High School as their winner, praising the way they had successfully linked their resilience project to the existing mental health initiatives within their school. Manchester Enterprise Academy and St. Peter’s RC High School were also highly commended for creating videos designed to pass on resilience tips and advice from older to younger students. Pupil and teacher feedback was extremely positive with one student commenting that the opportunity to collaborate with pupils from others schools had really helped her to become more confident. We are looking forward to continuing our work with the Voice Box student council network in the next academic year!