This was the final event in a series in the project which included a motivational talk from Sharon Fennelly who is a Life Coach and founder of GrowthMindset.ie and the series also incorporated a fun team building day in Carlingford. 

Healthy Campus@dkit is an initiative to promote both physical health, mental health and general wellbeing in County Louth and the surrounding locality. The students had been tasked with producing a website for a health and wellbeing topic of their choice.  The final websites that the students produced showcased such a variety of content on health awareness, encouraging sports participation, active wellness, promoting good physical health, healthy mind and good nutrition awareness. It was fantastic to see the diversity and the skills the students developed from this project.

At the promotional showcase, students pitched live to the external client “Healthy Ireland Co. Louth”, both James Treanor and Mark Garvey commented on how impressed they were with the event and websites. They said that the students presented with the upmost professionalism, and it was extremely beneficial and enriching for the students to get live feedback from an external organisation.

The showcase session was very enjoyable for the students and a positive learning experience for them, it allowed them to develop their public speaking skills and build confidence. The afternoon finished with a poll and 93% of the students highlighted they developed more of an understanding of wellbeing and how to look after themselves as a result of the project. It also allowed the students to increase their Web Development skills with 70% stating a positive outcome.

As part of the funding under the Healthy Campus@dkit the first-year undergraduate students also had a live team building which enabled them to participate in a healthy activity.  This was an afternoon hike in Carlingford that took in part of the Barnavave Loop, the students had the opportunity to form connections and bond with each other through the act of social learning which help fostered collaboration.

The DkIT web development module lecturers involved included Andrea Kealy, Derek O’Reilly and Jackie Toal. Jackie Toal highlighted it was

“fantastic for students to have the opportunity to showcase their web projects and to develop an awareness of health and wellbeing in line with their web programming skills to produce professional and creative designs”.

Healthy Louth representative Paula Keenan also commented

“We are absolutely delighted to have been able to support this project with the DkIT students”.

This event was supported by DkIT Healthy Campus Initiative, Healthy Louth, Pobal and the Healthy Ireland fund, Department of Health.