Here at Good Shepherd Primary & Nursery School, we place great importance in developing the role of our young people within the community. We aim to nurture compassion, understanding, communication and empathy amongst our young people and encourage them to be positive contributors to society. That’s why when we were approached by the social work team at Glendermott Medical Practice, to engage in the Christmas Penpal project with an Elderly member of the community- we were delighted!
“As part of the social work role within the GP Practice is to try and identify areas of need in the community, and from speaking to our Family GP’s the area of isolation for older people is a priority need. In this digital age, letter writing has been a bit lost, but we thought it was a good idea to try and help reduce social isolation and also increase empathy skills for our young people to put down their iPads and tablets, and pick up a pen and write a letter to someone in a local nursing or residential care home in time for Christmas 2020.
The aim of this act of kindness is to establish a regular pen pal relationship between a young person and elderly person. So our proposal is to ask a local school in the lead up to Christmas 2020, to write a personalised letter for an elderly person in a care home that is beside them, with the hope that the care staff will support the elderly person write a reply letter in the New Year. When the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions are finally lifted, the hope is that school children can come visit the elderly person, and maybe hold a celebration event at the end highlighting some of the lovely letters and feedback.”
Mrs Wilson’s P5 class was nominated to take part....and wow did they did a great job. Beautiful writing, uplifting messages and creative artwork was submitted. Well done P5! This project already has provided so many valuable learning opportunities and we will all look forward to receive responses in the new year.
Check out some of the highlights below:
#community #empathy #kindness #positivity #happiness
