Activity Report: Healthy Footsteps Fun Walk
Healthy Footsteps on right foot!
The PSU Healing Feathers "Healthy Footsteps" Walk drew participants from IHS, Northwest Portland Areas Indian Health Board, the Native American Rehab. Association (NARA) and students from the university. To support our event, pedometers were provided by NARA. Incentives included t-shirts "Just Move It" donated by Diné Nation and a follow up lunch.
Water was also provided by our two Native American clubs on campus, the American Indian Science and Engineer’s Society Chapter, and United Indian Students in Higher Education. NARA also participated along with PSU’s Student Health & Counseling Center (SHAC) by providing materials and information packets on health resources and services. NARA also provided information for mammograms for students. In this our first attempt it was fun and enjoyable sharing in the comraderie and spirit of Indian people gathering for positive, non-pressured activity.
An outstanding feature was having staff and students from the Portland metro community and PSU campus gather for the event. The walk was conducted at a comfortable pace and included people of all ages. Healthy Footsteps generated a lot of interest and discussion in planning future activities, such as a hike possibly in the Columbia River Gorge, aerobics nights, healthy-positive talking circles for students and hosting Indian elders from our tribal communities.
Best Features:
Having people engage in a positive event that was fun. There was no pressure and a lot of enthusiasm was generated.
Creative Features:
Inviting other organizations to share their information regarding resources, such as pedometers, info packets and service info for check ups, mammograms, counseling.
Challenges:
Getting several people thinking in unity. Everyone had a idea of what it should look like and some were pretty grandiose as well as complicated.
Future Plans:
Host (jointly if possible) at least one activity involving the Portland community as well as the PSU student community once quarter. Also hoping this will evolve into a monthly and even weekly event.
Lessons Learned
Keeping things simple and hinting that this could evolve into more indepth undertakings in the future.
Just Move It by Healthy Native Communities Partnership, Inc. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.