On the week of Nov. 8, Communications students Ryan Kirby, Grave Metzger, Mary O’Brien, Emily Monaco and Sara Kennedy hosted a Women’s Wellness Week on campus. From four to six p.m. at The Connelly Center, students could participate in interactive activities that helped to educate students on the topic of women’s wellness. The group also collaborated with the Office of Health Promotion and the student organization POWER for a Pet Therapy event held in the West Lounge of Dougherty. 

The topic of women’s wellness first presented itself when the five were sorted into a group for their senior Capstone course for the Communication major. Upon being assigned their project, the students considered what could be improved on Villanova’s campus.

“One of the things that came to mind is the way the campus communicates about women’s wellness,” Kirby said. “What inspired us initially was to change and increase the awareness and discussions on the topics because we, as seniors, hadn’t seen that in the past four years.”

The group was also inspired by a Robert Urich quote that reads, “A healthy outside starts from the inside.”

The project took lots of time and communication to cover the various little details the project encompassed, and the group put hard work into constructing the events. In fact, the group members commented that events like these take much effort for aspects such as getting tabling approved or getting approval to put up posters, and that it may deter students from hosting events like these in the future.

“There was a lot of preparation in the nitty-gritty details,” Kirby said. 

The group hosted various activities for students, covering a range of many topics including nutrition, exercise and how to navigate a healthy social life in college. Each topic was assigned a specific day in order to focus on its importance. Additionally, each member in the project took on a singular topic and made it their own.

“We divided between all of us each topic and based on our topic, we thought of an activity that’s not only informative, but really engaging and more creative,” O’Brien said. “We wanted something that students would want to do because they would get more out of that.” 

The hopes for this event were not merely centered around awareness in general, but the way information and resources are put out by the University considering these topics. The group’s attempts to discuss and engage in this subject matter were used to make women’s wellness more normalized and accessible on campus. They believe the resources provided on campus and how the campus as a whole perceives these topics have the potential to improve. 

“We wanted to change the messaging that’s been surrounding these topics,” Monaco said. “And we wanted to focus on the lack that they’ve been talked about on campus.”

In the Connelly Center, the group had a table each day with one topic which featured interactive games. It also had an event in Dougherty with the special focus being over exhaustion and sleep, for which they partnered with the student organization POWER and had therapy dogs present.

By partaking in these interactive games and events, students learned quick and easy ways to identify and engage in wellness. The group also touched upon how to identify on-campus resources. In all, the event was driven towards providing information and building awareness to students. But it was not so much of that sharing of information, but the way in which the information was presented that was so appealing. 

“Our main issue was how information and resources were communicated to students,” O’Brien said. “We felt that there was a lack of it, and being senior women who have been on campus for the past four years, we understand how we have taken the information, and how we best receive resources, and what we would want to hear.”

After concluding the week of events, the group wants to encourage others to continue the discussion about women’s wellness beyond its project. Since this is a topic which affects the student body, they feel it needs to continue to be discussed so the University can improve its resources and the scope of the issue as a whole can be changed. 

“I would love to see something like this continue,” Monaco said. “It’s one thing to see it from adults, but it is different to see it come from your peers.”