Events
Spring Into Action A Success
Most of us know that physical activity will improve our physical and mental health but sometimes it’s hard to get motivated to move. So each spring, Communitas launches its Spring Into Action initiative, encouraging people to get active after a long winter.
Bonnie Hayward is Communitas’ safety, health, and wellness coordinator and Spring Into Action is one of her many wellness initiatives. She is always looking for ways to motivate Communitas’ staff and the people served by the organization to improve both physical health and mental health.
“I don’t know about everyone else, but I seem to just hibernate through the winter,” Bonnie says. “At the first sign of spring, when the weather outside starts to get a little nicer, I want to get up and move more.”
Bonnie’s job means that she sits at a desk for much of the day. Tracking her steps showed her how little she was actually walking and this motivates her to get up and move. She loves going for walks to look at the cherry blossoms or the tulips and daffodils coming up each spring.
Spring Into Action has several built-in incentives. The big end-goal was to collectively travel the distance around the globe, following the 49th parallel for a total of 26, 030 km. Participants tracked their steps, kms or their time (which is then calculated into kms) doing whatever activities they enjoy.
Submitting photos to publish on Communitas’ social media channels was another way to share ideas for activities and encourage people to get out and about. Participants walked, cycled, hiked, worked out in the gym, went snow shoeing, practiced yoga, gardened, went paddle-boarding, and more.
Weekly random draws for a prize meant that everyone who submitted their activity logs had an equal chance of winning a gift card to Canadian Tire. Two prizes were drawn each week: one for someone in the Lower Mainland and one for someone on Vancouver Island. The added incentive was a grand prize, drawn from all the entries made over the course of the nine-week journey. Diane, a peer support worker with Communitas, was the winner of a $100 gift card towards a wellness related activity or item. She found Spring Into Action was a good motivator to get moving.
“I live with mobility challenges, so I set myself a goal to get up and walk at least every hour, during work and also at home,” Diane says, adding that she tracks her steps using a Fitbit.
Diane has chosen to use her gift card towards the purchase of a new pair of good quality shoes, which is appropriate, given the number of steps she walked during the course of Spring Into Action.
“When I told Diane that her total number of steps was 172,958 for a total of 138.4 kms, her response was ‘Wow,” Bonnie says.
Bonnie was inspired by the stories that people shared about their weekly goals. One person made a commitment to walk more steps each week, even if it was one more step. One staff person set an alarm every hour to get up from her desk and do 10 squats an hour for 8 hours – an equivalent to a 30-minute run. Several staff in Abbotsford participated in the Run for Water held in May.
All of these efforts led to success: by the end of May the Communitas family had exceeded their goal by 511 kms, collectively travelling 26,541 kms.
“I let out a ‘whoop’ when I saw that!” Bonnie says, proudly. “Each year we’ve exceeded our goal. I wonder what we should do next year?”
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