Our Development Officers, Vickki and Rachel, were invited to Tudor Grange Academy (a new contact for the White Ribbon Association) after a recommendation from another local organisation. The school was delivering a PSHE day to Year 12 students, and wanted us to focus on ways to stay safe during a night out.
In total the hour-long sessions needed to reach 120 students, so Rachel and Vickki split delivery into two separate sessions each.
As always, we aim to make our sessions as interactive and enjoyable as possible. On this occasion, we incorporated some new activities into the session, such as the alcohol clock (a timeline activity which illustrates approximately how long it takes alcohol to be removed from the body) and the Best Mates Night Out video (a short film which demonstrates many of the dangers that can be faced during a night out).
We also set out the safe night out activities for each member of the class to partake in. These include different challenges such as withdrawing money from a cash machine or picking up items from the floor – all whilst wearing alcohol-impairment goggles!
From all of these activities we were able to share ideas of how individuals could stay safe during a night out. We also handed out free drink Spikeys as a way to prevent drink spiking.
To end the session, we focussed on the signs and symptoms of alcohol poisoning and what to do in an emergency. The final message we left the students was ‘remember the push over, not the body bag, and save a life!’
We also left several displays and free leaflets in the Sixth Form common room, to reinforce the messages we had delivered in our sessions.