Closing the show season with an award-winning finish

ON Thursday, December 8, the Rural Support team set its show stand up for the final time this year at the Royal Ulster Winter Fair.

The Winter Fair closes a very busy 2022 show scene for many, and especially for Rural Support, which was back out this year at most of the local shows across Northern Ireland, supporting farmers and farming families.

The Winter Fair was a fantastic success for Rural Support, engaging with many farmers, farming families and stakeholders.

The day was topped off for the team with winning ‘Best Small Trade Stand’, a fantastic achievement for the team and closing the show season on a high.

Veronica Morris, Chief Execut-ive of Rural Support, said: “We were delighted to be presented with the award for Best Small Trade Stand today and have really enjoyed this final show of the year.

“We would like to congratulate RUAS on another successful show and thank them for this award.

“It has been an extremely busy year for Rural Support with outreach and on the ground delivery and this is an excellent way to mark the end of our show season.”

The Winter Fair saw the launch of the third Reviving Rural campaign for Rural Support. This project, which will be rolled out over the next two years, focuses on both the physical and mental wellbeing of farmers and farming families in Northern Ireland. Funded by the Department of Health’s Mental Health Fund via the Community Foundation, the project will do two key things to expand the breadth of support already offered by the organisation through its farm business mentoring programme:

n It will provide, where needed, one-to-one professional counselling and trauma therapy support for farmers and farming families who are in crisis situations, including those aff-

ected by farm accidents, loss, bereavement and trauma, work-ing with all members of the farming family.

n It will build on its preventative services and programmes by providing digital resources and targeted campaigns to help farmers and farming families to access information, learn new skills and work together to manage risks and plan for healthier mental and physical health.

This aspect of the project will include working with women and young people in agriculture to help them develop new habits and emotional toolkits to navigate their mental wellbeing and learn how to best support other farming family members.

This is the third campaign and it is focusing on loneliness and isolation. Throughout the week in the Reviving Rural series Rural Support looked at practical ways to prevent loneliness and isolation and all the feelings it can bring and how to develop ways of loving and helping ourselves and looking out for others along the way.

The team ran a social media campaign to highlight the ways you can try to combat loneliness and isolation, released its first podcast episode, and did a series of videos giving tips on how staff members deal with their own loneliness and isolation.

Make sure you check out Rural Support’s social media channels to find out more about dealing with loneliness and isolation, particularly at this time of

year, which can be challenging for many farmers and farm families.

Through delivery of this project Rural Support is continuing to take practical steps to support farmers and farming families in building resilience.