During this term we have been delivering our award winning RISE course to over 350 students.  During the 4 sessions we help and encourage the students to think about who they are, how they feel about themselves, who they want to be and what difference they can make in their communities.

In the first session we get each student to create a mask that represents who they are.  It gives each student a wonderful opportunity to express themselves freely and communicate with their peers interesting things about who they are, which they may never have shared before.  We then use these masks throughout the course, referring to how we sometimes show different sides and aspects to who we are.

At the end of a recent session we asked students to write down how RISE has helped them, one student wrote ’I have realised that I do not have to be perfect and that I should be who I am’. Another student wrote ‘RISE has helped me feel much more confident about myself, as I have realised that I make a difference to my community’.

RISE is a fantastic course for students to go through as it gives them the opportunity to look at who they are, who they want to be and the difference that they can make by being themselves!