The Flower 125 Health Programme

The 125 Programme and the Mentor Alcohol Award

Back in April 2006 I sent in an application for the Mentor UK Alcohol Misuse Prevention Award Scheme 2006. The award is to recognise work with primary aged children on alcohol misuse prevention. The letter saying that we were through to the next round of the award arrived in May; it contained good and bad news. The good news was that all short-listed programmes were invited to an Awards Ceremony at the Museum of London on the 29th September. The bad news was that we had to produce a 10-minute DVD telling the story of the programme.

Ten programmes were short-listed for the awards so we assumed that we had a one in ten chance of winning the £20,000 prize. There were, however, three categories with the same prize and we had a one in 4 chance!

The DVD was duly produced on a hot afternoon in July with the help of the children and staff of Mansel Primary school, diva creative and a box of cooling ice lollies. The video was edited and sent to Mentor - what a relief! We were pleased with the result and all we could do then was keep our fingers crossed.

Barbara Stacey and I attended the award ceremony along with two of the children from Mansel School. We imagined that this would be the closest to the Oscars that we would ever get. The children were very excited to be going to London on the train (the first time on a train for one and the first time in London for the other). We arrived at the Museum of London with plenty of time to spare, had our photographs taken with the banners that had been made for us and then had about an hour to look around the museum. The children were let loose with a digital camera and took loads of photographs as memories of the day - including pigeons. We were treated to a slap-up buffet lunch and then came the scary bit; the presentation and waiting to find out our fate. Actually it wasn’t that bad and we were entertained by 3 fantastic hip hop dancers. The celebrities were Konnie Huq and Zoe Salmon from Blue Peter and the children were thrilled to see them. Unfortunately we did not win the top award but it was a day to remember and we were awarded £350 and a lovely certificate.
Click here to have a look at the official and unofficial photographs.