So today I graduated as Jigsaw Peer Mental Health Educator. What the hell does that mean is probably what most of you just said. Basically, Jigsaw is a youth mental health organisation which offers mental health services for people between the ages of 14-25. A few years ago the Peer Education Programme was developed. Basically it's a 5 day mental health course for Transition Year students to learn about mental health, it also trains you to become a Peer Educator which basically means we are qualified to carry out lectures on mental health to secondary school students. Our local training institution for it was Jigsaw Clondalkin so basically two health care workers carried out the training with us.
We carried out the Programme with Moyle Park and Adamstown Community College. Each week we carried out a different part of the training in a different school so we all got a chance to get to know each other and see other schools.
On _____________ we had our graduation ceremony which was really fancy. Speeches were made,we had special guest Kevin McManamon who made a great speech about metal health awareness. We were then presented with our certificates, followed by food which was a buffet. It was a really nice way to celebrate the occasion and I'm really glad i got to be part of it. It was also really great to get to know new people and learn a lot about mental health and a bit of the psychology behind it.
Myself and my partner have just began our lectures with the First Years and so far so good. Hopefully the rest go as well!
