Laurier’s bi-annual Thrive Week is taking place for the fall semester this week, beginning Oct. 7 and finishing on Oct. 11, with events and giveaways all week long to bring awareness to the resources available to students on campus struggling with their mental health.
Events are happening throughout the week range from multiple different athletic and group exercise classes like Zumba, yoga, dance classes and rock climbing to thrive kit giveaways, workshop events and even a kickoff pancake breakfast that happened on Monday.
Starting in 2017, the Wellness Education Centre has hosted a thrive week twice a year, once in October and then again in January to ensure students are aware not only of the resources they can use to deal with mental health but also of their presence on campus that is always available to them.
“Part of my job is to be the chair for our thrive committee, which is a subsidiary of the mental health advisory committee, what we do is take feedback from the previous thrive and then see what went well and didn’t go well, on that committee we have residence life, the students’ union, the graduate students’ association and athletics and recreation, we come up with the ideas from that subcommittee as well as the peer wellness educators who give a student’s voice for ideas,” said Nathan Reeve, wellness education coordinator for the Student Wellness Centre.
“We’re putting skills and strategies in students to help each other out in addition to also helping themselves and getting them to find the help we can provide them as well.”
Each day also hosts a free thrive kit giveaway, in a different location each day, with kits including different elements to self-soothe by using the five senses, containing items like stress balls, ear plugs, eye masks, herbal teas and passes for group exercise classes among others.
“We found that last year there wasn’t a kickoff event so yesterday we spent time in the concourse and gave out over 400 pancakes, we tried to get students to recognize thrive and understand what it is, we have a lot of yoga because we know students love it so we have six opportunities,” Reeve said.
“A theme that we’re really trying to build this year is community care, so a lot of our events are based on social connection, trying to get students together like a walking group and group exercise and on Thursday we have helping a friend with their mental health which is based on listening and validating your friends as well as helping them help themselves.”
Thrive week will take place once again in January, but the Wellness Education Centre is also dedicating each month to a different sense of wellness, with November’s theme being financial literacy and financial wellness as many students may struggle with money and budgeting in school which causes further stress.
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