As a club, SI Medway and Maidstone have been working on the Love Me..Love Me Not..(LMLMN) project. We have been keen to develop the project further with school age children. During one of our project meetings in February, Sharon Forghani mentioned that we could approach Maplesden Noakes School in Maidstone to set a challenge for a group of Year 12 students to work on as part of their annual Business Challenge competition.
In early June, Sharon and Annette Davies met with the school mentors to discuss our challenge which was: –
‘To create and produce material to support the advancement of education particularly in relation to healthy/unhealthy relationships and what constitutes coercive and controlling behaviour in a friendship or relationship . This material will be age appropriate and used in schools year 7 (11–12-year-olds).
Two groups were allocated our challenge and had to present their findings/solution to us and a panel of judges on 14 July . We were extremely impressed with both groups’ presentations, the professionalism and maturity shown by the students in tackling a subject they knew little about.
An overall winning group for the competition followed by 2nd and 3rd place groups were chosen, and as an incentive, prize money was offered.
At the Awards Event on 16 July attended by Sharon, Angela Howe, Carol McKeough and Jane Barnes, we were proud when one of our teams was awarded Third place and received £500 prize money. In addition, the school confirmed they would be using the materials produced with Year 7 students from September.