I would like to begin by welcoming all new and existing students to Summer Term 2023. We are very excited to be launching our last term of the 2022/23 Academic Year.
Last term we were so glad to be out teaching in community venues; the most venues since the pandemic started! We hope to keep up with this trend this coming term. We had a range of new and old courses for both main stream and Young Adults. We were very excited about collaborating with 'The People's Speak' to deliver our first 'Podcasting' course where Young Adult students learnt and practiced different talkaoke and podcasting techniques! We had really good feedback about this course and the mode of delivery which has certainly influenced us to think about other diverse ways of delivering Young Adult courses. We also ran our first 'Train the Trainer' courses since the lockdowns - it was great to see so many interested people in learning how to teach with us - we will be running a bespoke 'Train the Trainer' this summer for those who specifically want to become a Peer Tutor with us! If you're interested in finding out more, please contact us on 0207 426 2332 or elft.thrc@nhs.net.
We also held our first Mental Health Awareness Week event with our contract partners MIND, Hestia and Working Well Trust. The event was a success and we hope to have more people attend next year! We also held our first PRIDE event this June to celebrate PRIDE Month! The successful event was filled with loads of fun and important learning and discussions about the history of the LGBTQI+ community's representation and struggle throughout history. We will have our PRIDE displays and posters up for the rest of June if you'd like to come and check it out!
This Summer Term 2023 we are delivering some new and exciting courses. 'Understanding Climate Change' is a new course that will explore what is climate change and what impact it will have on mental and physical health. We will focus the course on education and suggestions of what we can do in our lives to change the course of the current rate of climate change. In addition, we are bringing in some older courses that also explore social determinants of health and the intersection of health and social care; 'Understanding Capitalism, Inequalities and Mental Health' aims to shift the paradigm of understanding health away from an individualistic perspectives to a wider environmental perspective.
We are also very excited to be welcoming new volunteers joining our team this summer! They will help with relaunching our IT Support Sessions and Library Space; If you or someone you know would like IT support please contact us and we will book them in for IT Support. We've just had a range of tablets and laptops delivered specifically for these sessions - attendess do not need to bring in anything, just turn up and learn!
In addition we will be launching our Young Adult Social Hub which will involve holding social events and spaces for Young Adults and will be codelivered by our Young Adult team and peer tutors!
Our Community Inclusion work will continue alongside this Summer Term 2023! Unfortunately our Somali and Sylheti women's cooking and sewing sessions are full at this time but our separate Somali (Thurs 11-2pm) and Sylheti (Tues 11-12pm) Men's fitness sessions still have capacity so do let get in touch if you're interested in attending these or signposting someone to them! Our Wednesday 11am - 1pm Gardening Group at the Mudchute Farm is still running weekly with lots of availability for anyone who would like to attend!
We hope you're as excited as we are for this term and we can't wait to see you!
Jess :)