Young designers at Newham Sixth Form College (NewVIc) put their talents to work in a competition to create posters to encourage others to stop or never start smoking.

The competition was part of NewVIc’s stop smoking week activities organised in conjunction with NHS North East London and the City’s stop smoking service in Newham.

19-year-old Inayat Patel’s poster was judged to be the winner. His design was chosen by a panel comprising of two Level 1 student Stop Smoking Advisors from NewVIc, NewVIc’s Youth Activities Leader Steven Kern and David McMaster, Communities Lead from Newham’s Stop Smoking Team. Runners up were Raiesa Shafaq, Tahmina Khatun and Jesutomisin Ayeqbusi.

The judges agreed that Inayat’s entry was the best as it had strong design elements and language that young people can relate to.

David McMaster said: “Inayat has included some really strong messages encouraging young people to think for themselves and not give in to peer-pressure. The posters show that young people in Newham do know about the dangers of smoking and others to think about it too.”

Inayat received a medal for his creative efforts which will be displayed around NewVIc and on the college’s website (http://www.newvic.ac.uk/). The Newham stop smoking service plans to develop it into a resource use it to promote stopping smoking to younger people in the borough.

Inayat Patel said: “The inspiration for my design was peer pressure. It is commonplace in school/college environments and I wanted to portray the dilemma faced by its victims.”

The competition is a way of raising awareness by involving students in No Smoking Day. The NHS stop smoking service in Newham and NewVIc have a strong partnership. Recently 44 NewVIc students were trained to become Level 1 Stop Smoking Advisors. They now have the skills to provide brief advice, assessing smoker’s readiness to quit and how to signpost them to local stop smoking services.