Knockbeg College TY students John Phiri, Jamie Fitzharris, Cian Campion and Jamie Walker received first place in an All-Ireland Frame of Mind competition recently.
The group worked in conjunction with St. Patricks mental health services for their TikTok ‘A helping hand’.
The lads were then kind enough to donate some of their winnings to subsidising a transition year trip to Tayto Park in keeping with the helping hand theme.
Student John Phiri spoke about the importance of mental health.
He said: “We decided to make a TikTok for the competition and ended up winning.
“It was a wonderful experience and from all the feedback, we really feel we portrayed a message that was heard and felt by many people across the country and in our school.
“Mental Health and well-being is so important and definitely isn’t addressed or talked about enough.
“We want to change that and have everyone feel that it is ok not to feel good all the time. You have ups and downs; this comes with life and sometimes it only takes a chat for you to feel better again.”
He also explained how their entry came about.
John said: “It started when our teacher Ms Moore approached us to create a TikTok to spread awareness about well-being.
“The four of us spent some time in trying to produce ideas. We eventually agreed on a video where the main protagonist would be going through a tough time in school.
“We decided to go with this plan as we thought that it was something that many teenagers around Ireland would be able to relate to.
“One thing the four of us agreed on was that when we are feeling down, talking to someone always helps us and we wanted to incorporate this in our video.
“We started brainstorming about things in life that may bring us a bit of negativity. We all concluded that some things that bring us down negativity in school life are getting in trouble and doing poorly in exams.
“As a group, we also thought to show people what they could do to help when stuff is going wrong, that we should have a solution in the video. It took us a few hours in school to film it and 45 mins to edit it from home.
We then posted it on TikTok and it is currently on 40,000 views on TikTok alone. The comments on the video are heart felt and it brings us great joy that we were able to have so many people touched by it.
“We received immense help from Ms Moore and for this we are extremely grateful.
“Various other teachers also helped as in the video we needed to use classrooms, the P.E hall, the ref, and the football pitches.
“Our fellow classmates also gave us significant help and the video would not have had as good a message as it did without these contributions.
“We really appreciate this from everyone involved and we thank them all very much.
“We would also like to remind readers to look after your well-being and mental health.”
