Get Out, Get Active New Inter Faith Toolkit launched in Wolverhampton

Active Black Country have launched their new Get Out, Get Active toolkit as part of Inter Faith Week 2021.

The Toolkit for Faith Centres, developed over the last 18 months, provides faith leaders with the information and motivation to take a lead role in improving health and wellbeing in their communities.

In April 2020 Active Black Country launched Get Out Get Active in Wolverhampton, a 3-year programme with the aim of exploring the potential of faith centres to reach the most inactive disabled and non-disabled residents in the City and help them to be more active for the benefit of their health and wellbeing. The project’s original intention was to deliver activity and wellbeing sessions within faith-based facilities, however original delivery plans were immediately curtailed by the unprecedented event of a national lockdown, preventing (amongst other things) face-to-face consultation, site visits and group activities.

Whilst restrictions on movement were gradually relaxed, the start of the project coincided with the strictest limitations, whereby people were only permitted to leave the house for an hour a day for exercise. In response to the ongoing impact of COVID-19, the Active Black Country team have worked to adapt the Get Out, Get Active programme to ensure it is resilient to existing and future restrictions whilst also offering faith leaders knowledge about active and healthy lives and support to enable them to cascade that information to members of their local community.

Michael Salmon, Head of Insight, Health and Wellbeing at Active Black Country said:

Whilst the pandemic has led to understandable challenges in terms of delivering a physical activity intervention, the necessity to change our delivery plan has led to the collation of a series of learnings that we otherwise would not have uncovered. Faith leaders in Wolverhampton care greatly about the health and wellbeing of people in their community and have really stepped up to the plate during the last 18 months. This toolkit is designed to enable faith leaders from across the Black Country to use our examples of best practice and put their own plans in place to activate their communities.”

The toolkit was launched yesterday (16th November 2021) at the New Testament Church, Bilston and also at the Guru Teg Bahadur Sikh Gurdwara at Upper Villiers Street, Wolverhampton.

Leocadia Foya of the Utano Foundation said:

The Get Out Get Active Toolkit is really supporting us to deliver our programme more effectively. We are well informed about the available resources that people in our community can use. It has supported us with our engagement approach and helped us understand different levels of participation and how best to deliver our sessions.”

To download a copy of the Get Out, Get Active Toolkit for Faith Centres visit: https://www.activeblackcountry.co.uk/what-we-do/communities/faith-and-activity/

Image caption: Left to right: Michael Salmon (Head of Insight, Health and Wellbeing for Active Black Country, Rev Harold Williams from New Testament Church, Bilston and Bethune Smith, Faith and Activity Co-ordinator for Active Black Country)

ENDS