Health and care services

Promoting health in the inner city

open gym1 Paula Bradshaw, Director of the Greater Village Regeneration Trust, outlines how its open gym project is helping to improve the well-being of its neighbours.

Greater Village Regeneration Trust (GVRT) has recently opened its Fit 4 Life Centre on the Donegall Road in South Belfast, offering physical activity opportunities to members of the community in the Village, mid-Donegall Road and Sandy Row areas.

The centre is located within the South West Belfast Neighbourhood Renewal Area, defined as an area of multiple deprivation, with considerable health inequalities.

The over-arching remit of the Fit 4 Life Centre is to raise awareness of the personal and social benefits of physical activity for individuals through engagement and participation. This is done by offering a variety of structured programmes, activities and health initiatives. The employees of the centre engage with local people with all levels of fitness and abilities and to ensure that the individuals’ and groups’ needs are met by offering tailored programmes and support.

By way of background, in 2011 GVRT was able to borrow gym equipment for young people (aged 8-16) and ran a series of pilot programmes with 20 local youth groups, schools and sports teams. The feedback from the pilot’s participants was very positive, with local parents also expressing an interest in similar programmes being developed and delivered for other age groups.

GVRT secured funding from the Public Health Agency for the purchase of adult-sized equipment and we started to run classes, which also proved very successful. Since this time, GVRT has continued to increase provision within the fitness studio, through additional equipment and fitness machines; and the training for a range of local people who provide the fitness programmes and classes through our ‘Your Time’ capacity building programme.

Since April 2013, we have been providing classes, programmes and ‘open gym’ classes five days per week from 10am until 9pm. There are a variety of programmes for young people such as Monday night’s ‘Youth Fit’ programme (12-17 years) which, due to increasing numbers, we are considering putting on Friday evenings thereby providing a further youth diversionary session.

On Friday mornings, we deliver our Adonis and Athena programmes for 25 young people (16 years+) from Sandy Row and the Village, to gain OCN Level 1 diplomas in health and fitness, which includes one hour of fitness activity and a range of lifestyle-related modules e.g. drug and alcohol misuse, healthy eating, personal hygiene, sexual health, smoking cessation, citizenship and volunteering in the community. This is the third year that we have delivered the Adonis programme for young men but the first of the Athena element for young women.

The programmes aimed at the elderly (e.g. Monday and Wednesday morning senior circuits classes and the ‘open gym’ sessions on Tuesday and Thursday mornings) have resulted in the engagement of many members of the community in exercise for the first time in many years.

Running alongside the activities, GVRT has been running its ‘Your Time’ programme, as above. This involves the funding of a range of fitness instructor courses for local people, including, keep fit to music, kettle bells, circuits, weight lifting etc. If a course costs £400, then the participant has to give back 16 hours of volunteering within the gym (i.e. at £25 per hour). To date, we have invested in six local people, many of whom have been able to secure work through Belfast City Council leisure centres and private centres for the delivery of their classes.

We do not receive any direct funding for the Fit 4 Life Centre. It is primarily funded through income from the classes and ‘open gym’ sessions and also through the provision of collaborative projects with a range of local groups and sports clubs, which are supported by the Public Health Agency, Belfast City Council, Sport NI, Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, Ulster Rugby and Irish Football Association.

Show More
Back to top button