At the Outside the Square Healthy Communities event last week we heard about lots of local initiatives.
1. Advocating for safe crossings
Kathryn Stanislawski spoke about how as a kinder mum she wanted to have a safe road crossing to encourage more parents and kids to walk to kinder in Huntly. She started the Huntly Safe Pedestrian Highway Crossing group and advocated to Council for access to a push button crossing near the kinder. This was unsuccessful, so now the group is looking at other ways to encourage more people to walk and cycle and less cars on the road.
2. Creating community gardens
Fiona Mummery from the Eaglehawk Community House spoke of a very exciting virtual garden initiative they are starting up. This involves a community garden at the community house, connected with other others in the area that also grow veggies, with the idea to sell a weekly veggie bag to locals. This initiative is great because it provides practical healthy eating options, supports local food and provides new connections for the volunteers who help out in the gardens as well as.
3. Fundraising for a cause
Stephen Iser, from Hume and Iser, spoke about the fundraising rides he has been doing with a group of other keen cyclists to raise much needed funds for St Luke’s Anglicare. What a great way to combine health, fitness and fun whilst contributing to a good cause.
4. Changing our habits
Ann Lansberry gave us an interesting analogy about why diets don’t work. She is getting to work on developing an initiative that addresses the changing of habits required to result in long term sustainable and realistic health and fitness.
These local healthy champions showed us that we can all get in there and have a go at creating initiatives that contribute to a healthy community in Bendigo.
And this is just a small sample of what’s happening.
5. Lots of other initiatives
These are some of the other initiatives identified by participants on the night:
The Bendigo Community Farmer’s Market Bendigo Ultimate Frisbee
The Bendigo Family Nature Club The Golden Square Community Pool
The Bendigo Bushwalking Club The Bendigo Arthritis Club
The U3A Bushwalking Club The numerous fun runs raising funds for various causes
Bendigo Against Monsanto The Bendigo Community Food Network
Tre-X Australian Cross Triathlon Championships and MultiSport Festival
Of course there’s all the sports clubs too!
Want to get involved or find out more?
When you start looking, you can discover that there really is a lot happening in Bendigo when it comes to community initiatives that benefit health.
If this is something that you are interested in getting involved in, then you can register your interest as a Healthy Champ with the Healthy Together Bendigo Program.
Find out more about the guest speaker Garry Muratore of No McDonalds in the Dandenong Ranges here.
Read up on some of the new ideas put forward on the night here.