CoCo Day 2018

Posted at 11:38 am on 17th July, 2018

Community Cohesion at Wellacre

Wellacre hosted our annual CoCo (Community Cohesion) Day on Friday 6th July, students were invited to take part in a wide variety of interactive and thought-provoking sessions encouraging them to reflect on their community and the diversity within it.

Visitors engaged students in sessions including Islamophobia with the Myriad Foundation, self-defence with Gracie Barra Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, youth culture with Stephen Clarke and sport with Sale FC Rugby.

Local politicians including the former Mayor of Trafford Councillor Coupe and Councillor Evans accompanied the Trafford Youth Parliament to raise awareness of student voice and the power of young people for the community.  

As a former Wellacre student, we were delighted to welcome Councillor Coupe back to talk with students.  On twitter, he said:

“I’ve just had an awesome morning with students and staff @WellacreAcademy It was great to be back and talking about my journey from Wellacre to the Trafford Mayoralty.”

Fellow former Wellacre student and local actor/entertainer Wayne Devlin also accepted the invitation to join Wellacre.  He delivered lively drama workshops for Year 7 students as well as an assembly raising awareness of the impact of his charity work in the community; he finished the day with a rousing sing-along of ‘New York, New York’.

One parent said:

“My son has come home from school today full of confidence, full of ambition and full of self drive.  Wayne Devlin gave lessons to my son’s year and an assembly about charity work and what it means to be charitable.  He has really inspired my son and his friends and really lifted his confidence.”

Staff also delivered an array of sessions on veganism, Keith Haring’s ‘Change4Life’ pop art, team sport ‘ultimate frisbee’, geography field survey about local crime, Japanese culture and language.  Our Eco Warriors also banded together to work hard at our Eco Centre, weeding and path building to improve the area and make it more accessible.

Rio, Year 7

“Normal school work is good for us, but CoCo Day has been amazing - it’s been really fun but we’ve still been learning. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was my all time favourite lesson at Wellacre so far!”

Wellacre is very proud of the work of our BBC School Reporters who spent the day touring all the sessions, taking photos and writing articles to create their own CoCo Day newspaper. Well done to our budding journalists - Connor, Jack M, Jack K, Harry, Dan, Ashley and Alex.