23 Apr Saint Joseph’s Shankill – Primary Schools’ Dementia Awareness Programme

Saint Joseph’s Shankill; dedicated to dementia care, launches first ever primary schools dementia awareness programme. Primary schools in the locality have been invited to participate in the “Cherished Memories Art Competition” with the aim of the competition to establish local connections within the community, promoting Saint Joseph’s Shankill as a place for all the community to be involved in and to begin a conversation about dementia with our young people.  Forty schools in total have been invited to take part, offering nearly 10,000 students the chance to be a part of this programme.

The competition will focus on cherished memories, and what memories mean to primary school children. Children will take part by drawing their cherished memory and write a few words about that memory explaining why it is important to them.

Lidl Shankill and Explorium; The National Sports and Science Museum are showing their support by sponsoring this initiative. Students will compete in one of 5 categories as follows;

• Junior and Senior Infants
• 1^st and 2^nd Classes
• 3^rd and 4^th Classes
• 5^th and 6^th Classes
• And Special Education Classes

There will also be a Best Class prize, for a class that has made the best effort collectively, and this lucky class will be awarded a day pass for the whole class to Explorium; The National Sports and Science Museum.

Saint Joseph’s Shankill has provided some classroom discussion tips on their website www.saintjospehsshankill.ie for teachers to help their students delve a little deeper into what dementia means and the affects it may have on people and their lives, and ways to help them.

This is the ONLY primary school’s initiative promoting awareness about dementia in Ireland.