Live Well and Healthy

Aim

The aim of Live Well and Healthy is to help prevent obesity by informally educating young people to choose healthy options in their lives.

Live Well and Healthy

The Gap Community Centre runs 4 x Youth Clubs per week (3 juniors 7-11 years and 1 senior 12-16 years) with an average of 25 young people attending each session.

The project, Live Well and Healthy, will include activities such as sports, healthy cooking, arts & crafts, with the focus on reinforcing the importance of making healthy choices for a well-balanced lifestyle.  Over 50% of Youth Club members live in deprived conditions and through previous consultations, we know that there is a tendancy for many parents to rely on convenience foods rather than providing home-cooked meals.  

Project Goals

Our goal is to informally educate young people about healthy lifestyle, exploring with them the importance of practising sports and eating well.  We would like to demonstrate to young people that eating healthily can be affordable and tasty, demystifying the misconception that healthy eating is always expensive and boring.

Living a healthy life is an important aspect of a flourishing society.  According to The Health Foundation, one of the main influences on health and wellbeing, together with education and employment, is the extent to which the community facilitates healthy habits and social connection.  Therefore, we believe that our project contributes to the development of a healthy, thriving local community.   

Activities will involve:

• Sports and Physical Activities- we will continue to provide the opportunity for Youth Club members to engage in  our regular sports, including football, table tennis, dodgeball and badminton.  However, we will also introduce them to new experiences including:
  • trampolining
  • bowling
  • ice skating
  • frisbee golf
  • Taekwondo
  • outdoor survival skills 
• Cooking - We will teach young people how to cook healthy food on a budget with the aim of improving their knowledge, skills and awareness of the dangers of high fat, high sugar foods.  We will also produce recipes that young people will be able to take home and cook with their parents, meaning the whole family will be able to benefit from the cooking workshops.
• Arts and Crafts - We will use these sessions to create activities that will emphasise health and well-being, i.e. painting fruits and drawing people and creating mosaics of people practicing different sports.  These activities will give us the opportunity to talk to the young people about eating habits, their favourite food, their favourite sports and the importance of eating well and practising exercises.

This project successfully funded on 14th November 2017