Cardinal John Dew has congratulated Small Talk, a team of students from St Mary’s College on an innovative idea to promote positivity and help counteract suicide. Writing on his facebook page last week, Cardinal Dew described a project called “Small Talk”, the creation of a team of six students from St Mary’s College, participating in the Young Enterprise Scheme, 2016.
The project has been the feature of a newshub.co.nz article.
“Small Talk was inspired by Mapo Bridge in South Korea, which is famous for the number
of people who jumped off and killed themselves, until it was decorated with positive slogans
and saw suicide rates cut by 77 per cent,” Cardinal Dew wrote.
“The St Mary’s team have created ‘Small Talk’ stickers with positive or motivational quotes, and are selling them to cafés to stick on the top of takeaway coffee cup lids.
“The proceeds are being given to Lifeline [Aotearoa]. Congratulations to the team for seeking to do something about the difficult topic of suicide,” the cardinal said.
Small Talk chief executive Emily Jenner told newshub’s Paul Henry that the project has been receiving “great feedback”.
“People have come back to us and said, ‘wow, this is amazing’, ‘we haven’t heard of this’, ‘we need people to actually be standing up to this’,” she said.
“That’s how we’ve been getting cafés on board – they want to join in and make their customers feel more positive.”
In an emergency call 111.
• Lifeline ph: 0800 543 354.
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