Patrick Harper

Just going to update my events schedule, if there’s anything you’re interested in email me on patrick@aware-ni.org

Dates to be confirmed:

Northern Ireland Youth Forum debate on the 27^th of April, will either be Stormont debate, multiple focus groups, or music events.

Public talk in University of Ulster TBC

Jailbreak awards ceremony to be held in the students union during depression aware week, date TBC

Launch of new policy of Health and Safety Executive TBC, plus either a public talk or depression awareness training

Sky diving preferably held on Friday the 30^th, awaiting a high profile jumper.

University of Ulster art competition. TBC

Other events you may be interested in attending:

Why am I – Vin McCullough waterside theatre 15^th April 2010, a play about the writers personal experiences with Bi-polar Disorder

There are supposed to be lines in that table dividing columns however wordpress doesn’t seem to like bullet points or tables, if you want me to e-mail it out to me contact me on facebook or on the e-mail provided.

Well it wont be tonight but on the 15th to the 17th of April Queens RAG society will be orgainizing a Jailbreak for us. Before you think it’s anything sinister or involving Maze prison, it is not. On the 15th of April a group of people will be meeting at queens and then will have 36 hours to get as far away from Belfast as possible without using any money, The shortest recorded distance for one of these is 4 miles, the longest is Japan. So if you want to try your luck in escaping the country please contact the jailbreak officer Joshua Greenwood, he can be contacted on jgreenwood02@qub.ac.uk. I’d like to get as many people trying to escape the country in this so if you are interested please go for it, It’ll be fun! The proceeds for this will be split up four ways between RAGs chosen charities of which aware defeat depression is one of them. So if you are interested here are the rules:

 RAG                    Jailbreak: The Rules

Your mission: Attempt to get as far away from The Queen’s University of Belfast as possible within the 36 hours starting 12:00 GMT Thursday 15 April 2010 ending 00:01 GMT on Saturday 17 April 2010.

• You have 36 hours from 12:00 (15/04/10) to travel as far as possible
• You are not allowed to spend any money on travel, whether that is your own money, or someone else buying tickets for you.
• 2 people to a team (No all female teams for safety purposes).
• To be eligible to “escape” you must attend mandatory pre-briefings as and when they are announced.
• Sponsorship is to be raised, minimum of £150 lump sum promised prior to “escaping.”
• You agree that “escaping” is taken at your own risk and as such RAG. will not be held responsible for any shenanigans you get up to i.e. getting stuck with no money to return home (There are no contingency arrangements to have participants retrieved.),getting arrested, et cetera: An Individual registration and medical declaration form must be signed prior to “escaping” stating this.
• Do not use family members for lifts; however using other connections (e.g. friends of friends.) is encouraged!
• If en route and offered a lift/thumbing a lift, the male member of the team must always enters the car first and leave the car last whilst hitch-hiking. When in a car you must text the Jailbreak organisers to let them know you are doing so.
• Do not split up from your team member…Ever. This is for your own safety
  • We will supply: Your Jailbreak 2010 uniform. Your insurance documents. A letter confirming your participation in Jailbreak 2010. These documents must be kept with you at all times.
  • A registration fee of £40 is payable to RAG. This covers full travel insurance, uniform, etc: Any money left over will become prize and/or charity money. The deposit money will not be refunded if the team drops out in the fortnight approaching the event, or if the team does not raise minimum sponsorship of £150.

What you need to do at your furthest point

• Bring back a copy of Saturday’s local newspaper (must be dated).
• Take a photograph of yourselves beside a significant landmark (wearing your Jailbreak uniform and holding said newspaper)
• Phone the RAG Office (02890971050) to inform them of your whereabouts, with a landline contact number. The Jailbreak team will then phone you back on this number.
• You must hold: A valid passport (within 6 months of travel)

                          EHIC health card

                          Phone with international roaming and credit

                          Camera (between two)

                          All relevant RAG documentation

Well it seems as the week of events draws nearer, my workload is going up, but then again the weeks schedule is beginning to look alot better. Heres a  table i drew up with all of the events i have organized, the two about stress and stress management are events that age concern will be organizing, they will be closed events. I have added these events to my schedule as they are relavent to our depression aware week and during our week we will be working with age concern on 1 or 2 of our other events. we will also be working with the University of Ulster as they are holding a mental health awareness week at the same time as our depression aware week. This means we will be sending out our information stand to each campus of the university of ulster, we just haven’t been told which campus we will be setting up a stand for on each day, but effectively it’ll be a week long tour of information across the 4 Universities. i have about another 6 events to confirm, including a laughter workshop, a public talk, a mental health first aid training course, and abseiling off a building in queens, but as soon as i know so will you. But heres my table to enjoy, it looks better on word, it doesn’t properly transfer over to wordpress unfortunately.

Depression Aware Week Calendar

well today went pretty damn well, we now have a venue, a mayor and a local celebrity for our launch event. The venue might i add is very very nice. i thought as my blog was a bit dull i’d add some photos of it. I hadn’t been inside the city hall before, and i have to admit i was a bit shocked at how nice it was. so we will be getting the reception hall for a nice quick launch with plenty of press and light refreshments, and its going to be on the 22nd of april.

I also have confirmation that we can do our training course mood matters in my old school during the week so i’m pretty damn happy about that too. Just composing a letter letting people know about the launch event and my political debate im organising, this letter’s getting sent to all the people involved with aware so i’ve got to make it look pretty

I have my meeting with the SDLP tomorrow too, lets hope we end the week on a high, fingers crossed!

Well week three has finished so I thought it was time to update the masses on what we have new to offer! So I went into week three quite positively with the progress made during week two, however the week started with me progressing backwards. I was trying to get a laughter workshop into the courts service and 2 other organizations who all seemed interested in helping to de-stress and relax their workforce. I thought this would be quite easy to organize as we have done this before at our general conference, and the interest from these companies was already there. All was going well until the lady who runs the laughter workshops tried to charge a large fee because she had to come from Donegal, which is understandable. However this did not sit well, so these plans fell apart, which is very unfortunate. I have found a replacement, who does offer a very good laughter workshop, but now it’s a case of trying to persuade the 3 organizations to come back to us and book these workshops. My second bout of going backwards came from the mood matters program I thought I had already organised, turns out I hadn’t so I have to convince another person to run this program in Wallace, so fingers crossed that he will sign them up to learn more about the issues.

This was a bit of a disastrous start to the week, but hey things go on and so must my plans. I spoke to my colleague Alison to try and consolidate our efforts as she has been doing a bit of organising on her own. And it looks like we are making good progress in a few other areas, so here they are even if they aren’t fully set in stone yet:

• We have been in talks with Queens RAG charity group who have supported us in previous years, and it seems we have the go ahead for a charity abseil down a building in queens. We just need to get the finer details nailed down but other than that we are good to go.

• The NASUWT teachers union are getting a public talk about the issues with depression in a bid to try and introduce mental health first aid training to teachers in school so there will be more people to help any kids/teenagers suffering from depression. This is set for Thursday the 29th.

• The Stormont long gallery has been booked for the Thursday the 29th of April at 6pm and the alliance party signed up for a political debate in the style of question time. We plan to have the UUP, SDLP, DUP, PUP and Sinn Fein there too, and I’m meeting with representatives of the SDLP and UUP next week to discuss their involvement. If you are a member of any of the other parties or happen to know anyone in them that would like to get involved, give me a shout and we can get something sorted. Also if you would like to attend/or field a question to these politicians to see their policy when it comes to mental health you should also get in contact with me.

• Wallace is going to run a charity collection for me during the afternoon on the 26th of April

• We are going to have a launch event at the city halls lord mayor chambers/function room on the 22nd of April at 12 noon. The Lord Mayor and a quest speaker or two will be at the event, and hopefully lots of press, so keep a beady eye on the news that weekend.

• The ball is rolling with the NIYF, who also want to get involved so I’m meeting with them in a weeks time to discuss the possibility of a youth debate to go along with the political one, so we can compare the two viewpoints of the meetings.

• The good old QFT have us in on the 1st of May 2010 for our matinee performance, I’ve had to extend the week by 1 day so I can still have this screening, which I will fight to the death to keep. they are looking for 3 or 4 titles and then will get the easiest one to source, I’m thinking of suggesting Prozac nation, postcards from the edge, about Schmidt and the pursuit of happiness as film suggestions, if anyone else has a good idea for a film, just send me an idea and I’ll take it on board.

• we will also hopefully have a launch event for our mood matters program for the older generation, that will probably be held on the Wednesday during the week, but plans are in motion to get this sorted.

I think that it for the time being, but I’ll keep you posted on my progress with the laughter workshops and other public talks/seminars I’m trying to get organised for the week. If there is anything involving the week anyone would like to discuss phone me on

02890321734

Or email me on patrick@aware-ni.org

Thanks

Patrick

Well it seems there was a bit of a reversal of fortune since tuesday, as a few things are now being close to sorted.

I have recaptured the QFT for my film screening, only i have to wait till saturday the 1st of may for it which simply means expanding the event for one day just so we can end on the film, Hopefully we’ll be getting our information stand to the QFT as well as shooting a short for the start of the film to let people know about our week. I know what film i want to show, but going to meet with QFT next week to sort things out.

My good old school (wallace high school) are going to do a charity collection for us during this week, and in return we are going to send out our mood matters program to teach one of their year groups about the issues of depression. thanks grace you came through for me in the end!!

Looks like i may have secured the mayor of Belfast and her commons room for a launch day on the monday the 26th of april, they are trying to push me to doing it to the thursday before, but our schedules already changing so I’m going to fight hard for the monday spot.

I have a few other plans in the pipeline to go with these, but i wont mention them incase i jinx it like i did with the QFT, so i’ll let ya all know what the craic is when i’m closer to having them organised.

I’ve also had my first business lunch with another organisation, age concern and patrice are great people and were a lot of help, as they do a similar program for age awareness week, it was gooding getting advice from someone in the same boat as me.

Since adding my link to facebook i’ve had some really encouraging feed back, so thanks guys. if anyone fancies doing their own event or lending a hand, just let me know

cheers Guys

Well week two has kicked off and after the success of the first week, i was condfident that things would go well, alas this was not the case! I found out that i mightent be able to run my film event because of the film festival happening in belfast at the same time, so at the moment the event is looking highly unlikely. As this was the only real event i got anywhere near organising, it came as a big disappointment to me because i was really looking forward to that event, now i got to come up with a replacement plan and work my ass off to make up for it, because a lot of time was spent on this plan last week……

anyone got any ideas?

other than that i am making progress in other areas, just got to hope that my frustration at the film industry doesn’t throw me off for the rest of the week.

After getting fully rested from my day trip to london to meet the rest of the UK winners it was time to get down to some serious work.

I started the week off going to my charity aware defeat depression and having a talk with the ceo about how my role with them will change now im a full time member of staff for the next 2 months, (i have volunteered for this charity before but only part time and unpaid work). so i was nicely eased into my role during my first day.

Then came the second day…… I was introduced to what work i’ll be doing over the next few weeks and it seemed really daunting. I have to organise a nation wide (well throughout northern ireland) series of events raising the awareness of the issues affecting anyone  with experiences of depression. This workload seemed so daunting because the man who was supposed to be supervising me is off ill with the dreaded swine flu, so im left to my own devices for the next two weeks trying to get a few events organised and to liase with other charities. As i havent done this kind of work before i hadn’t the foggiest idea of what to do.

By the third day i had a plan….. time to start enjoying myself, and i have. so far i’ve alreadygot the go ahead to arrange a cinema screening of a themed film in a local cinema as part of our week, which may also be a part of the belfast film festival. I’ve also been in communication with other organisations to see how we can work together to spread the awareness of depression. The charity im working for seem very dedicated at campaigning for equal rights for people with a mental illness, providing support, information and education in a part of the country where little is down by the NHS to help people suffering from depression and other mental health problems, and it is that dedication and passion that appeals to me….so i shall fight for there cause and enjoy doing so.

Thus brings the end of my first week, i’ll keep ya’s updated with further developments in my awareness week!