By Louca-Mai Brady,
I had school on Saturday morning for our September meeting, so arrived just before lunch. The group was smaller than usual because of traffic, being busy or ill. The other members of YPAG told me that:
For the part I was there for, I met Jurga, a PhD student at the University. She came to talk to us about our experiences with health and being a school nurse. We wrote all of our thoughts on a flipchart and post-it notes. I found this interesting as someone with a parent who is a doctor, I usually just go to her, so I found it very interesting hearing about others’ outlook. Jurga said:
“I had an incredibly productive meeting with YPAG. Their insights were instrumental in shaping my research. The young participants were not only excellent but also deeply engaged with the topic. Truly brilliant work from everyone involved!”
For lunch as always, we had the University’s amazing pizza, potato wedges and vegan options with cookies for dessert 🍕🍪😋
After lunch, Claire came to talk to us again about SALIENT, which is a project involving the environmental impact of food products. We made a ranking of food groups on a graph using post-it notes and then got to see the official one. It was interesting to see which ones matched up or not. Claire said
“It was great to see how much the group have understood and engaged with the SALIENT project over the last year. They are aware of the debates around sustainability and health, and they always have ideas about where we could go next.”
We then got to see our finished YPAG film! This was very exiting for us as this is one of the first times we’ve seen it and the ‘making of’ film altogether. You can watch them here.
After a quick cake 🎂break to celebrate some birthdays in the group, we talked about the Adapt-Ed project that Louca-Mai, Lauren and Rebecca are working on, which is about improving food in special schools. We talked about whether any of our members would like to help take part in one in December, meeting with a few children and young people from Adapt-Ed to help design a logo and podcast in the New Year.
Overall, this was a very fun and productive meeting, and I’m looking forward to the next!