News Active In-Betweens Term 1 2025 New Year new term and we started with a training day for staff and volunteers to refresh on our Trauma Responsive Care to ensure our young people feel supported within our program. Our Youth Volunteers also had their first altogether training session and we are delighted to have them supporting young people as healthy role models within their community 8-12 years old is an important child developmental age and we are passionate about supporting pre-teens to keep active and encourage healthy eating whilst providing the opportunities to engage with supportive role models within the community. We continued our programs in partnership with Albion Park Rail Community Centre, Bellambi Neighbourhood centre, Bundaleer community centre, Horsley Community Centre and Warilla Neighbourhood Centre. Term 1 starts off the new school year with an overarching focus on Food and Nutrition. Each session has a specific health message focus and they included: Colour Explosion Run – Eat a Rainbow. Cooking Spag Bolg – Hidden Sugars Milk Crate Circus – Give me some Space Gardening – Growing Herbs Supermarket Tour – Snack Challenge Scavenger Hunt – Mindfulness Green Connect Outing – Food Sustainability Cooking Kangaroo Honey Soy Noodles – Using local ingredients Sports Charades: Try it Out, Play for health. Every week was fun fun fun with 704 children attending the program this Term but there were 3 stand out highlights! Green Connect Outing: Green Connect is an amazing social enterprise Urban Farm in Warrawong with a focus on supporting young people and former refugees, growing fair food and connecting the community. The Active In-Betweens kids got to visit and wow what an eye opener it was! From collecting chicken eggs, feeding pigs (and hearing their journey to meat), feeding many cheeky funny goats and learning (and smelling and touching!) compost, it as an amazing experience. Learning where our food comes from increases our awareness and value we place on food making us appreciate it more and waste it less! Supermarket Challenge: Each child was allocated $5 to buy a snack in the supermarket that met nutritional markers such as sugar under 15g and sodium over 400g. Turned out to be quite a challenge. Children learned to read labels, question food marketing and budget their money to get the best value for their snack. The challenge encouraged children to work together and to question before buying giving an awareness of our purchases and there were definitely lots of food that didn’t make the cut! It’s such as great onsite learning experience for the children that is shared with parents through the Facebook group to continue the learning at home. Give me some Space! Children got to learn about their lung capacity by blowing water out of big milk containers! This interactive activity challenged the children and was a great conversation opener about things that can negatively affect their lungs. Milk Crate Circus then showed us some awesome skills that we could all try. It was great fun hula hooping, balancing and twirling whilst learning that exercise is very important for your lung health. This Term also saw the sad closure of Horsley Community Centre Active In-Betweens after over 10 years for new location across at Koonawarra Community Centre. This location was identified to be more fit for purpose and catering for increasing need in the area and we’re excited to continue our partnership with Careways Community. Term 2 starts 5th of May in all locations and we’d love for new children to join. If you are interested in any of the programs that run weekly across the Wollongong and Shellharbour LGA please check out the website for more information and registration details https://healthycities.org.au/programs/active-in-betweens/ With thanks to Barnardos Community for Children Shellharbour, Dapto’s League and Australian Drug Foundation LDAT for funding these programs. Find Term 1 2025 Report here Look at the cool different colours of these eggs – I really didn’t know eggs are collected from chickens like this. I fed and saw the pigs and now I’m not sure I really want to eat bacon!