World Health Day and Nelson Celebrates by Taking It To the Streets!

It has been a long time since we blogged but here we go with our latest – the World Health Day Celebration on April 7,2018.  The CFHC and Nelson Star have sponsored the Passport to Wellness Health fair for the past 3 years but this year, with an idea to focus on fitness and health we decided to “take it to the streets”.

Zumba-ing for 10,000 Steps

About 10 years ago one of our CFHC members came back excited about a walking program called 10,000 steps she found in Darlington, New Zealand. The town had numerous signs with maps on them encouraging people to walk 10,000 steps a day for health. The walks were of varying difficulty and there was even a time posted to meet if you would like to meet other walkers. Well it sometime takes the right time and the right place for things to happen, but this turned out to be the year.

Led by the Chair Deb Zeeben, the health fair committee of Marion Hunter, Cathy Foxcroft, Sarah Popoff and Madeleine Collins invited the City of Nelson, represented by Ginger Lester and Joanna Markin, NDCC with Jodi Voudsen, Vanessa Finnie from SD8 and Dawn Tomlin to meet with us to plan something bigger and to involve more the community.  

Kootenay Martial Arts Team Kicking for 10,000 Steps

The City decided to take on the 10,000 steps and are creating the signs and have paced out the first route. The NDCC came to the table with ideas for the activities on that day for the centre and on their new signs in the arena to add 10,000 to their laps, and IHA volunteered to purchase pedometers for walkers to use available at the Library or through IHA and Cathy Potkins.

Invitations were sent out for others to offer free activities on that day

Wildflower 

after the walk and in Nelson fashion, Selkirk College sponsored Zumba, LVR hosted Kidsport with Mini Hockey and Ringette and the Nelson Pickleball club introduced the sport to newcomers to the game.  We had Hot Bambu with yoga, and the Nelson Scottish country dancers down at NDCC along with an Indoor walk led by Cathy Potkin.

 Loonie Toonie day all day at the pool with childminding services included. The Nelson Squash club came on board, as did Kootenay Martial Arts and Jungle Body.

At 10:00 am in the cold and rain, with snow looking imminent, the ribbon was cut by Pat Dooley IHA, Naomi Ross SD8 and Deb Zeeben CFHC, and led by the Nelson Air Cadets, 35 brave souls headed out the inaugural 10,000 step walk.  Along with the walk and other activities over 200 people were involved in the day.

We want to thank everyone that contributed to this event and we hope that once the signs are in place, people will discover that walking 10,000 steps is good for your health and fun to do.  We are hoping to have a route that includes a Heritage tour walk, and the route mapped by Wildflower around the Uphill area.

Wildflower

Wildflower Stepping Out in Their Neighbourhood

Spring is HERE !! And now is the time to try something new and get outside and get moving.

 Signing off

Eric and Marion