This week was the inaugural Wellington College Wellbeing Week. Events ran on lunchtimes throughout the week, and were loosely based on the Māori concept of Hauora.

The week started off with a hiss and a roar on Tuesday as Hurricanes captain Brad Shields gave a speech about his ride to the top of professional rugby. He also talked about some of the obstacles he has faced in his career and the importance of having strong mental health when faced with hardship. This was aimed at the mental and emotional side of Hauora.

Wednesday lunchtime saw a focus on the social wall of Hauora. We collated some interesting facts about the teachers and ran a fun quiz in the library for anyone to come along to. Groups of mates came down for a good time, during a wet lunchtime while we sold pink shirts outside the library, in preparation for Pink Shirt Day.

The house event “The Amazing Race” ran during Thursday lunchtime, with each house putting together a group of students to represent them. These students ran around the school completing small teamwork based challenges. Shout out to Kaipapa for taking out the honours with a seven millisecond victory over Waitangi, who came in second! This event was symbolic of the physical wall of Hauora.

Finally, the week was wrapped up with Pink Shirt Day on Friday. More pink tie-dyed Runathon shirts were available to purchase, and were sold out within 20 minutes of the stand opening! The rest of the school pulled through as well, with an impressive amount of participation and lots of pink on display. Donations were collected for the Pink Shirt Foundation, which supports schools with resources to prevent bullying and helping out students who might be victims of bullying.

Shout out to everyone who came out to any of these events this week, and thank you to everyone who helped out along the way.

The Wellbeing Prefect Team

Freeman Yu, Fergus Prince, Oliver Pearson and Oliver Hays.