"I'll treasure that forever," Tabulam Cottage resident Jim Newby said, after he was gifted with a handkerchief from a Portland Central student.
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Students from Portland Central school visited Portland's aged care residents at Tabulam Cottage on Tuesday, August 20.
They handed out flowers, hankies and kindness messages as part of their resilience project with LINC community hub.
LINC community hub manager Leanne Walding said students spent time to pick out messages, wrap each gift and made the effort to hand them out.
"We're currently working through our six week LINC'd Up program which looks at each of the students personally on their moral development, pessimistic and optimistic thinking.
"It's about looking at how they can make a nice moment and that is why a group of them decided they wanted to come up and visit the people at Tabulam and just give a gesture and have a conversation," she said.
Ms Walding said the students didn't realise how good the gesture would make them feel until they were doing it.
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"They weren't aware how it would make them feel and it was obvious with their response and the way they interacted with the residents," she said.
On September 20 the group will do their second part of the resilience project, which will be a sports day fundraiser with all money raised going to lung cancer research or to those experiencing cancer.
"The key part of that [fundraiser] is going to be where they actually bring out the junior students in the school and they're going to make a circle of friendship and a sports activity to get to know the older students because they're often in different parts of the school ground," Ms Walding said.
She said the LINC community hub aimed to introduce the program in all schools.
"We're about to move into our big resilience coaching project in September where we'll have people within all the schools and start to roll it [the program] out there," she said.
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