Freshers 2016 in Scotland

With Fresher’s fairs being one of the most important events in the student calendar, it is vital that there a plethora of information and advice available to students on the day.

Indeed, Fresher’s is the perfect platform for us to deliver our Education Programme. It allows us to deliver some key messages and create awareness around possible factors that could potentially affect student’s future fertility. It allows us to demonstrate how a few simple lifestyle changes today could help them in the future if, and when, they decide to start a family.

Information and statistics is an important tool in letting us know how aware students are concerning possible risk factors, and the results allow us to tailor our programme appropriately. To enable us to collate this information we provide a very short questionnaire and thanks to some very generous sponsors, we can offer some super prizes in return for that information and the incentive attracts footfall and allows us to engage with the students.

Disseminating our message and advice in the correct way to the students we meet is key and offering some fun and interactive tools whilst doing this has proven to be a hit. This year we were very pleased to be offered additional funding which provided our students with some drink aware goodies such as measuring calculators and measuring cups. Although we aim to have as much fun as possible at our stalls with the use of these items, it is imperative to us that we deliver our leaflet professionally. With the use of our fun and interactive games and our easy to read colourful leaflet we hope that the students we speak to enjoy and understand what they have learned but more importantly can take the information on board and make any lifestyle changes they feel needed in order to have a happier, healthier future.

We visited colleges and universities throughout Scotland during the Freshers period from as north as Aberdeen and Inverness to as far south as Dumfries and each year we manage to increase our reach with the help of extra staff and volunteers.

Every year in Glasgow the Freshers Festival attracts students from all over Scotland with their live music and bands, celebrity guest appearances, literally hundreds of stalls, wall to wall free food and giveaways and this year was no exception with 12,000/13,000 tickets issued.   We were lucky enough to be able to attend again this year and managed to engage with hundreds of students which is a huge boost for the Education Programme.

For more information on our education project, or all of our other services in Scotland please contact one of our regional staff members in Scotland.