Hey, so the last post was pretty touchy feely. This post is going to be me begging a little… okay, maybe not begging, but you get the point. I’ll probably be writing about this more and more in the coming weeks and months as well, but please listen up.
If you take a look at my Current Projects tab you will see I am trying to build a fitness club in my town as part of my secondary project. The thing is I need to get money to buy all the equipment and pay for transportation and alike. This is a project that so many people in my town keep asking me about and keep wondering if it will work; they are very excited. The project is on the site Wide Awake. Wide Awake is a non-profit group that handles donations and helps people like me get the projects they need for their communities. They are great people and have only the people they help in mind. All the money given to them for donations goes to the projects. THERE IS NO ADMINSTRATIVE CUT! I have been using Wide Awake since I arrived in Keda, a former PCV started it, but he passed it on to me. Since then I’ve worked with him, and the director of the Educational Resource Center here in Keda to get write these grants to get things for the schools in our region. We bought books for kids under the poverty line, beehives for a family, 100 dictionaries for the schools, chalkboards for some classrooms, science equipment, and just a bunch of other useful things. Most of these projects have been under $500, but I decided to use this site as a way to raise money for my fitness center. I am looking for $4900, which sounds like a lot (it is), but if everyone I know can pitch in a little, and they get their friends and family to pitch in some I should be well on my way to getting fully funded.
You may be asking yourself, “Why should we give money to a FITNESS CENTER?” Well, after the collapse of the USSR the athletic departments that had been funded very well fell apart. Many of the community centers went under due to underfunding, and athletic competitions and education began to fall behind drastically. This can even be seen in the home as well. In a 2005 WHO study , 59% of women and 49% of men in Georgia were overweight. By 2015 that number is going to go up 64% and 55% respectively. Now, these numbers are nowhere near the United States and many developed nations, but it’s still very high. Also, unlike the United States, people in Georgia don’t have access to equipment or proper information to keep themselves healthy. Keda has an indoor sports complex, and a brand new wrestling/kickboxing/martial arts center (there is a Georgian champion in one of the village for wrestling), and I decided that a great addition is to make the sports center more community friendly was to put in some treadmills and elliptical machines.The nearest place for people to exercise is over an hour a way in Batumi, but the cost of one of those fitness clubs is enormous. Those clubs are pretty much reserved all for people with money, and tourists. Building a fitness club in Keda will give people in a small town some of the luxuries only to the rich can use now.
The fitness center will also double as a healthy living classroom. After it’s built I’ll have the trainers there learn basic weightlifting, weight loss, and endurance exercises and they will hold classes. I’ll bring in female PCVs to hold yoga classes to get more women involved. In fact, I was planning on making it women’s only day one day a week. Then the fitness center will also be a classroom for healthy lifestyle classes. We will use the space to discuss HIV/AIDS, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, nutrition, mental health, and lots of other things. The best part is, Peace Corps has a committee for healthy lifestyles with LOTS of information I could use and people that could come and do lessons. It really would be amazing! People in my community don’t have access to information about these topics, and I’d love to have a real place where I can get people to come and listen to lectures and talk about some of these issues.
This is a really important step for the people in Keda, and they could really use all the help you can give. If you find yourself in a giving mood please donate anything you can for the people here. Tell me and I’ll also have you name engraved on a plaque that will be hung up inside the fitness center forever. That’s right, YOU WILL GET YOUR NAME ON A PLAQUE, WRITTEN IN ENGLISH AND GEORGIAN.
So, again, here’s the link and please help my community. Tell your parents, friends, family, church group, boy scouts, and anybody else who may be interested. Thanks again everyone, and have a great Friday!
Here are some pictures of our building and the fitness room:
This is our community sports facility. The room with the lights on is my fitness center.
It's not huge, but I already laid out a great plan for the windows. Putting the treadmill facing the window so it looks like you're running outside.
On the other side of the room. We'll keep one of the desks as a sign-in desk to track how many people come in.
Right now it's a really boring room, but everything works! No work has to be done of the room itself. I will be attaching a new electrical socket to the far right wall.
Alright, take care everyone. And remember, one more time! Your name on a PLAQUE in GEORGIA
Awesome job man, hope you get the funding for it and it works out :) I myself can attest to a lot of what Tom is saying, being that I spent a year living in Keda myself. Having no fitness or training facilities in the region really hurt. I was forced to run and exercise down narrow two-lane highways with cars whizzing by. It's really needed in Keda along with the education of why exercise is so important. Good luck man and let me know what I can do to help! - Tom
ReplyDeleteHey Tom. Good timing on facebook because it made me read this post. I hope to be able to help you with the goal sometime in the next few weeks but in the meantime, some food for thought:
ReplyDeleteNot sure if you are familiar with the trend of fitness boot camps. I just participated in one this summer and I think that they are a much better way than a gym to build a community in the people that attend and to get results. Here is some basic info(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitness_boot_camp). I think they require less investment as far as equipment goes, but they might require more people and time since everything is done with a trainer. I don't know if you have the resources to manage that. I think the key to getting people to life healthier lifestyles is keeping them accountable so maybe another option would be making a system where people keep each other accountable.
I don't know nearly enough about the situation to give an educated advice, but it's just something to consider.