St Mark’s win award for promoting mental health in community
A SPORTS club is “delighted” to have won a national award for promoting mental health in its community and is set to receive €5,000 in funding for doing so.
St Mark’s GAA Club has claimed the overall award for delivering the best programme for their club and community over the course of the 10- week One Good Club initiative.
“We are absolutely delighted to have won the Best Overall Engagement award in the One Good Club youth mental health programme,” says Denise Paisley, One Good Club project team leader at St Mark’s.
“Being selected to represent Dublin alone was a huge honour for St Mark’s, so we are absolutely over the moon to have completed the programme, finishing with the top national award.
“Our committee put so much time, effort, and hard work into our One Good Club journey, and the response we’ve had from the club and our wider community has made it all worthwhile for us.”
St Mark’s GAA club was picked as the Dublin representatives for the One Good Club initiative, a nationwide programme which aims to build and encourage positive mental health promotion.
Parker, Anna, Lucy, Roisin and Max take part in St Mark’s GAA Club’s One Good Club Community Clean-Up Day
This 10-week programme has seen the club putting their innovation caps on to engage their community in a heap of different events every week.
Each event related back to Jigsaw’s ‘five-a-day for your mental health’, which includes connect, get active, give, keep learning, and take notice.
Organised by the Tallaght club, some 400 people swarmed to McGee Park to attend a free family-friendly wellness festival called Suburban Picnic in July.
The club successfully ran a sports day, community clean-up day and a movie night, which helped young people learn about emotions through a special showing of Disney Pixar’s Inside Out.
Even now that St Mark’s has claimed the top honours, it is not the end of their One Good Club journey.
“We thoroughly enjoyed hosting all our events, so much so that we have decided to continue with the One Good Club committee, continuing the events and more importantly keeping in line with Jigsaw’s five-a-day for mental health.
“We want to say a huge thank you to everyone who helped us along the way and supported some of our events.”
