Moncton NBCC Holds Wellness fair on Nov. 5 from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

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Lise Elsliger

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What better way to give business students hands-on skills than by incorporating in the curriculum a project that will help them develop important events organizational skills. This helps them learn how to work as a team, along with other necessary skills such as marketing and business planning.

"The course that I am teaching right now is called event planning," explains Moncton Community College instructor Shelley Poirier. "This course is offered to the business students and the office administration students. These students take this course to be better equipped and more knowledgeable in how to prepare, plan and execute major events."

The project required student to invite exhibitors across the Greater Moncton community who promote wellness.

"We're bringing them all together in the gym here at the school and we're going to open it up to the public. It's free admission. So we're asking the community to come in, and get a better feel for wellness, and get an idea of what's out there in the community and bring wellness supporters together. Our student body can have access to resources and networks that promote and support wellness in Moncton, Dieppe and Riverview communities."

The event involved developing skills such as working with the media. Students created flyers and brochures and made contacts at different agencies. They've also used their administrative skills to manage and maintain the data that they have been collecting, such as maintaining e-mail addresses and making thank you letters. "It's been a really good learning curve for me as an instructor. Because this is the first time I teach this. The students are learning and I'm learning as well. And I'm really enjoying it," Poirier says.

Although it is her first time teaching this course, she has been teaching at the college since 2003.

What is wellness?

"That's a good question," she says. "Because as a class we had to discuss what wellness meant to us. For example, we had to look at spirituality wellness, we had to look at senior citizens and what wellness means to them, we had to look at children, we had to look at students, what wellness means to different students here at our school.

"There were so many ideas behind what wellness meant to everybody. Wellness means making sure my family was healthy and happy, wellness meant making sure I could manage eating well, sleeping well, and studying for school, wellness meant taking care of my in-laws that are living in my home. So there was very wide definitions of wellness for all the students in the class so sort of brought us together to decide we were going to invite and hopefully who was going to accept the invitation to be a supporter."

Among the wellness groups that will be taking part in the fair are the Cancer Society, the Canadian Mental Health Association, and Work Safe NB.

Other groups present are Addiction Services, the agency that provides resources and information for rehabilitation for various addictions, such as internet addictions, gambling, alcoholism, and drugs.

"The students wanted to bring in Addiction Services resource for other students .Because we see all different sorts of addictions in a large student body. We are going to see different students that have issues with family, and financial, and personal, and medical, so we wanted to bring in resources of what's out there."

Oulton College will be bringing their dental hygienist class. They will be giving information related to dental health and dental hygiene.

People can look at wellness and how to better their spirituality, with the group called Clayhut Healing Center, based out of Riverview.

"The purpose is to inform the public about wellness," Poirier says. "So that they can see what is available in the community with respect to becoming more active, living a better life, building self-confidence, learning about better eating through organizations such as The Canadian School for Natural Nutrition, or safety and physical fitness with the YMCA. Understanding about what activities are available for seniors, for my children, for my pre-teens.

"We are a community college. And we want to open the doors to our community. And what a better way to bring people together then when you're promoting and supporting wellness."

The Wellness fair will take place in the NBCC gym from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on November 5.