Kate McInnesHealth Week 2015 is over, but the work of University of Alberta Wellness advocates continues year round.
From March 23 to 29, the Health and Wellness Movement (HWM) collaborated with several student groups and services to produce the U of A’s annual Health Week, a collective celebration of wellness initiatives at campus. The week aimed to recognize the different ways wellness is expressed in the community, and featured a variety of related events including yoga sessions, a bystander intervention seminar, a creative writing workshop and a blood drive.
During Health Week’s closing ceremonies on Mar. 27, the HWM honoured several student groups who contribute to campus health and well-being throughout the school year, including OUTreach, the Stollery Youth Committee, the U of A Improv Group and the Tolkien Society. Health and Wellness Movement President Moni Holowach said these groups were chosen for their positive impact on the greater campus community and for their inclusive nature.
“These students are brought together by a common interest, but that’s just one simple icebreaker that gets them all in the same room to have fun,” Holowach said.
The HWM is a student organization that strives to promote smarter food choices, more effective stress management and healthier living with the ultimate goal of transforming the U of A into a healthier campus.
Health Week’s closing ceremonies also saw The Wellness Project — an extension of the Healthy Campus Unit that aims to foster a culture of wellness on campus — announce their 2015 Wellness Champions. This initiative, launched earlier in the semester, was designed to highlight the work of U of A community members whose good deeds might fall under the radar of what is traditionally seen as wellness. Among the Wellness Champions are Tim Horton’s server Linda Schlodder, the U of A Compliments team, U of A librarians and the Relaxation Superstation.
In order to show the extent and reach of wellness on campus, Healthy Campus Unit Team Lead Melissa Visconti invited each champion to place a pin on a campus map in the Student’s Union Building (SUB).
“All across campus, we have people who are contributing to well-being,” Visconti said. “One thing that’s really important is that all actions we take, small or big, make a big difference on our campus, and that’s one thing that we were hoping to expand the dialogue around with the Wellness Champions initiative.”
Lutheran Chaplain and Wellness Champion Richard Reimer agreed with Visconti, as he recalled the several on-campus suicides that occurred in the past year — for which he and other members of the U of A’s Interfaith Chaplains Association conducted memorials — and stressed the importance of creating a network for at-risk individuals.
“It’s such a big campus and there’s so much going on here, and it’s hard sometimes to connect,” Reimer said. “People get isolated, they get lonely, and those are big problems here.”
“We don’t want people to go to that dark place. I appreciate everything that Health Week is about … because it’s lifting up the whole campus and creating communities, which are informal, but they are so necessary because (we) want to prevent people from getting to that place where they are absolutely desperate.”
