High Sheriff visits Market Drayton for "highly successful" Health and Wellbeing event
Organisers of a Shropshire wellbeing festival have hailed it a success, as they received a special visit from the new High Sheriff of Shropshire.
The Market Drayton Health and Wellbeing Festival took place yesterday at the Festival Drayton Centre, with a range of organisations from across the county taking part.
The purpose of the annual event is to raise awareness of the services offered by local groups and organisations, which support people in leading healthy and active lives.
This year, the festival received a special visit from the High Sheriff of Shropshire, Mandy Thorn, who has only recently taken over the role from Ms Selina Graham.
Eric Davies, organiser of the Health and Wellbeing Festival said: "We had 32 exhibitors on 30 stands and two of them were sharing a table.
"We network with about 100 different organisations which provide the services and facilities for people living in Market Drayton.
"A lot of them are not based in the town, so this is an opportunity to highlight those who provide health and wellbeing services to residents.
"It was highly successful; I have just had a lovely email from Leek Building Society who have offered to send two volunteers to the next event in October – the manager has written to say how impressed they were yesterday.
"I went around and spoke to the exhibitors and they were highly satisfied with the number of visitors that came through. Right the way through there was a steady stream of visitors."
Some of the exhibitors were as follows: Drayton Action for Health and Community Care; Healthwatch Shropshire; Home Instead; Lingen Davies Cancer Fund: LiveLife; Market Drayton Community Amateur Sports’ Club; Market Drayton Ramblers; St John Ambulance; Woodland Trust and Shropshire Fire & Rescue.
Eric went on to say that the High Sheriff enjoyed her time at the festival and Eric was pleased to receive an award from Ms Thorn for being a local "hero".
Market Drayton Health and Wellbeing Festival is run by Market Drayton Community Enterprise (MDCE) which aims to create a greater sense of community and wellbeing in the town.
By promoting better health and wellbeing, it is also the group's intention that this will reduce the demand on medical services.
Members of MDCE hope to eventually find a base of their own, so that they can offer a stand to all 100 organisations in their network and hold monthly or quarterly events.
