Active In-Betweens Term 4 2022

Term 4 of Active in-Betweens saw a record breaking 93 children attending our 5 sites in one week! We continued our programs in partnership with Bellambi Neighbourhood centre, Bundaleer community centre, Shellharbour Aboriginal Community and Youth Association, Horsley Community Centre and Warilla Neighbourhood Centre.

8-12 years old is an important child developmental age and we are passionate about supports pre-teens to keep active and encourage healthy eating whilst providing the opportunities to engage with supportive role models within the community.

Our program each term is influenced by what the children and community want, and this Term saw a great variety of activities including healthy messaging includes:

• Illawarra Hawks basketball skills
• Nacho and Sushi Master cooking sessions
• Guest facilitators from Little Kickers celebrating the Soccer World Cup
• Children’s rights scavenger Hunt
• Drone Flying and creative photography
• Christmas Op Shop Challenge
• Color Explosion
• Clean up Challenge
• Illawarra Hawks basketball skills

Every week was fun fun fun with over 582 Children attending the program but there were 3 stand out highlights for us this Term!

Shellharbour Aboriginal Community and Youth Association (SACYA) Term 4 launch with the Illawarra Hawks!

We enlisted the support of our friends at Illawarra Hawks to come to run a skills session and kick off a 3×3 basketball program using the amenities at SACYA. 24 children came and 35 adults all came down to see what the program was about and loved meeting and playing with the Hawks players! Add in some healthy snacks, weird and wonderful food, a visit from the Shellharbour Mayor Chris Homes plus some Hawks merch and it was a very lovely afternoon for children and adults. It was a great community event raising the profile of SACYA and the Active In-Betweens program at that venue.

Clean Up challenge

In our efforts to create healthier environments across Illawarra, we posed a challenge to the children– let’s see how much rubbish we can collect and recycle with each site having 2 teams competing against each other and amongst the 5 sites! We provided hi vis jackets, rubbish bags and claws plus special items containers and they explored the surrounds including local parks and bush lands. Some of the items found dumped included, broken trampoline, bike wheels, pillows, lots of plastic bottles and bags, cigarette butts and even a bong. All items were weighted by staff and disposed of correctly. A whopping 45 kgs was collected across the areas and we were amazed at the gusto that children took on the task with one boy, 11 commenting “I never thought I’d say this but this is actually fun and now the place looks much better!”

Drone Flying and Creative Photography

Drone flying is on the rise and kids said they’d love to give it a go so we organised a pilot to come in to support the kids in using small scale drones. We were then visited by HCI’s

Marketing & Fundraising Officer Tahnee with a photography drone. We asked the kids to come up with some words to describe the program and we attempted to recreate the word with our bodies and take photos from the sky! The session definitely tested fitness as we chased after drones that were being taken by the wind and creativity and leaderships skills as we tried to manipulated our bodies into letters! It was a lot of fun and something the majority of the children had never done before!

If you are interested in any of the programs that run weekly across the Wollongong and Shellharbour LGA please contact Elizabeth on 02 4283 8111. or Elizabethb@healthycities.org.au

With thanks to Barnardos CfC Shellharbour, Dapto Leagues Club, Bellambi Neighbourhood Centre, Bundaleer Community Centre

Key stats:

• 9 weeks of the Term
• 5 sites
• 3 staff and 2 volunteers at each site (rostered for, not always achieved)
• 154 enrolled
• 582 children attended across the Term
• 93 children attended in one week.

Few quotes from children:

“This tastes better than the Sushi you buy in shopping centre” girl 9

“I never thought I’d say this but this is actually fun and now the place looks much better!” boy 11

“I’ve ran so far and so fast, I’m so tired but I’m happy” girl 12 after doing Color explosion race.

Few quotes from adults: 

‘“The kids absolutely love coming here” Nan of 2 boys SACYA

“It’s really good that you brought the kids here, they can learn don’t always have to buy new and reusing can save lots of money. It’s been really great seeing the kids enjoy the experience” Salvos staff after Op shop Xmas Challenge

“Thank you so much for the opportunity to engage with your programs. It is so great seeing these programs first-hand. The value these programs add to young peoples’ lives is incredible” Lauren Peters Shellharbour City Council”