Bowden turned into a focal point for discussions about how to help people in communities throughout this region lead healthier lives.The town hosted the 2014 Communities ChooseWell forum at the Bowden Friendship Centre on April 2 and the event drew roughly 15 participants with backgrounds in health services, local government and Family and Community Support Services from communities such as Bowden and Olds.ChooseWell is a program that promotes active living and healthy eating in communities and is managed by the Alberta Recreation and Parks Association with support from Alberta Health.Lisa McLaughlin, a manager with the program, said the purpose of the forum was to share information about the program with community leaders, outline what resources ChooseWell offers to communities and provide a chance for participants to network.“The program's all about trying to support and recognize communities for their work to promote and facilitate healthy eating and active living in their communities,” she said.Discussions throughout the event touched on ideas about how to engage people to volunteer for health and wellness-based programs and activities in the community and brainstorming sessions about how to use resources communities already have in place for healthy living activities.“Even if you have the infrastructure, is it affordable to everyone, do people feel safe using it, can people get to it?” McLaughlin said.The ChooseWell program, she added, provides communities with opportunities to apply for seed funding for various projects, free webinars, support for events such as community challenges and tool kits that include promotional items and education resources for community distribution.Bowden has used the program to work on food-based projects and last year received a seed grant from the program for its community garden and Good Food Box program, where for $10 or $20 per delivery, people can receive a small or large box of fresh fruit and vegetables.McLaughlin said she hoped forum participants would walk away from the forum with tools they could take back to their communities.“The idea would be that they have some goals or ideas that they've already kind of informally declared when they registered,” she said. “It's just really trying to act as a spark for them to go back and look at what they can do in their community.”Bowden councillor Sheila Church, who attended the forum with Coun. Sandy Gamble and Jade Prefontaine, an administrative assistant with the town, said she came away from the forum with some ideas about how to give people in the town more healthy choices at community events such as hockey games at the arena.“For a hundred years we've offered burgers and fries and all that kind of thing,” she said. “Maybe we should get into the new century and offer the kids some choices. Kids are being better educated about their nutrition and I think many of them would choose something nutritious but healthy over the usual.”Church added that a very helpful part of the forum was a discussion on how communities can create policies geared towards active and healthy lifestyles.“As far as our council is concerned, we're not too bad on the activities part, everybody thinks about recreational facilities, but not too much on the healthy eating.”Overall, Church said she was surprised at what she learned at the forum, since she had originally planned to attend the event just to support Beth Kuntz.Having recognized a need for healthy living options in Bowden, Kuntz was introduced to ChooseWell in 2011 and signed the community up for the program that year through the town's recreation board, on which she sits.“We haven't utilized them near to what they have available so this, we're just hoping to get more resources and get some more, hopefully, funding and things from them.”She said her aim for the meeting was to come away with “direction” on how to improve healthy lifestyle options in the town.“How can we use this to make Bowden a better place to live?” Kuntz said. “Volunteers would be nice too, to get more people to help out with different events but just focusing on what Bowden needs and then where we can go from there.”[email protected]
