Mental Health Expo - ReachOut Stall and Exam Stress Presentation

After a lot of hard work and the mental health expo is over! This is a long post so you have been
warned, mainly because I want to document it but also so it can be used as a resource for other ReachOut Youth Ambassadors if they ever get the chance to do something like this.

How the expo ran was that there was a morning session between 9.00am and 10.30am then morning tea followed by breakout sessions (where I was presenting) from 11.10am -12.20pm (with a 10 minute break in the middle), then lunch and the afternoon session between 1.00pm-2.30pm. All stall holders were welcome to join in any sessions they wished but I didn't do the morning session so I could focus on my presentation, though after lunch (and after I had packed up) I went in to the afternoon session which was good (though the first half was on sport so I kinda switched off for that). I was asked to be there for a 7.30am set up and to expect people before the morning session, recess and lunch. I was thankful that a forum moderator (the only one in my state) could be there to help for the bulk of it which was helpful. I had to set up in the theatre for my presentation during recess which was really busy so it helped to have her man the table while I did that.


The Stall - I kept it pretty simple once again with my light box (best $20 I have ever spent!), a blue tablecloth, lollies (I buy mentos and mini chupa chups in bulk from The Reject Store as they are cheap and individually wrapped), brochures and bookmarks with the Caption Game (see below) in the middle. Thankfully table and chairs were provided though the table was narrow but I made things work, I also took a freestanding banner. I find that the light box and banner makes everything seem more professional and once again I got confused as a staff member from ReachOut!
As I was catching the train in, I found it make sense to pack everything (including my laptop and food for the day) into a small roll along suitcase which made things so much easier. I think from now on I will do this for stalls rather than carrying everything in a crate.

The Presentation - the irony of this was that it caused me a lot of stress and it was about exam stress haha! I spent a good amount of time writing my talk and powerpoint to go along with it, I also rehersed it on and off for 2 weeks leading up the expo.
For the content I just picked and chose what would work in well from this page. This meant that I could use it as a point of reference at the end of the talk and direct people to check it out.
I did the presentation during both break-out sessions and I will say that the second presentation did go a lot more smoothly which was expected. Despite me thinking that both talks should come close to 30 minutes they came in at 20 minutes which was fine. Including a video was a good idea and it was something that they could all related to and tied in with the talk perfectly (Rahart Adam's your 'There's Life After' video helped make my talk!).


Caption Game - I always find it helps to have some sort of interactive element on stalls, to get people talking and act as an ice breaker. I have previously made a memory game but from experience at last years expo I knew it wouldn't work so instead I made a caption game. The concept was based on the game What Do You Meme where you match captions to memes but I wanted this have to have a mental health twist and the captions not be so long. Instead I had some basic captions (some mental health related) and a variety of images and people could match them as they pleased and leave them in the middle of the table for other people to see them.

Captions -  I used a variety of captions all kept to one sentence. I just typed in a text box on Word keeping the format the same. Some captions I used included: what a good day feels like, what a bad feels like, me and my friends, words of advice, when I try to explain myself to people. how people react to mental illness, how people should react to mental illness, when I realise I have responsibilities, how I feel today, when your favourite song comes on in the car... I had a total of 22 captions but that included some repeats.

Images - I found these over a week (when I took breaks from writing my presentation) and printed them off every time I had a couple of pages of them. I tried to use a wide variety of images and made sure that the bulk of them had some wording on them (as in quotes from tv shows) rather than just images. I also included some quotes from popular young adult novels including: Harry Potter, Tomorrow When The War Began (which is common book high schoolers read in school), If I stay and Everything, Everything (as the movie has just come out).
Images I used included: Friends quotes/memes, Degrassi: Next Generation Quotes (I had a heap saved in my images that had to do with mental health), movie characters (including Big Hero 6, Inside Out, minions and a Princess Bride quote), Parks and Rec quotes, The IT crowd quotes, Brooklyn Nine Nine quotes, a pic of a celeb ambassador (Rahart Adams) for ReachOut wearing a ReachOut hoodie and a few other random images. In the end I had a total of 41 images.

I then printed out the images and captions in colour and the tedious work began! I really wanted to make sure the game lasted, so after I printed them out I cut them out and stuck them on white cardboard, then cut them out and laminated them and finally cut them out again! You could totally skip the laminating part but I am lucky enough to have access to one and figured that it will make them last. I do suggest at least gluing them onto cardboard as paper isn't going to handle much wear and tear.

I was able to do the cutting out while watching Netflix so it wasn't too bad and its nice to have access to another game when it comes to stalls.

This game went down really well and a lot of teachers were impressed by it (one even took a photo it so she could recreate something similar), some kids also liked flicking through the images and having a laugh.

All in all it was an extremely successful (but tiring) day and I am thrilled that I get opportunites like this because of ReachOut.