A Scottish supermarket group have donated equipment funds to Forth Valley College’s Back4Life initiative after checking out how it will benefit the local community.
Kirsty Connell, Scotmid’s Membership and Community Officer (East) Scotland was delighted to drop in to see the sports students involved on Thursday 15 November, and present them with £500 to help them develop their service.
The grant will be used to purchase new mobile health equipment that can be used across the Forth Valley area (Falkirk, Stirling and Clackmannanshire) in a wide range of community and business settings including care homes, community centres, businesses, schools, nurseries.
The Back4Life programme is a branch from the ‘I am the Machine’ initiative. It hopes to change the mind-set of labour intense workforce, so they recognise that pre-work warm-up and post-work cool-down - along with back care exercises - are vital to reduce the amount of back or joint injuries to modern apprentices (MAs) and young people working in labour intensive industry.
Back4Life has been developed jointly by Michelle Hamilton (lecturer) and Fitness, Health and Exercise students from the College’s Department of Care, Health and Construction. Following a hugely successfully pilot with students, external contractors on our new Falkirk Campus site and Forth Valley NHS staff, the students identified an opportunity for wider community benefit to reach individuals at higher risk. Examples of this include elderly and people with mobility problems and the group will run tailored sessions, providing information on back health and raising awareness on how exercise can help to reduce injury or help ease existing issues.
Kirsty (pictured centre), said: “We are delighted to support Forth Valley College’s Back4Life initiative as it will allow the group to go out into the community and carry out some great work aimed at improving back care for workers in all industries.”
FVC Sport and Fitness lecturer Michelle Hamilton (also pictured), said: “We can’t thank Kirsty and Scotmid enough for their very kind donation. This will allow us to push ahead and deliver even more Back4Life sessions to local companies and the community, who are realising that back care is just as important for office workers as well as those involved in heavy lifting.
“This project has given the students a fantastic unique learning experience and opportunity as they are involved in the planning and delivery of the sessions within the local community.
“Minor back problems can often lead to more serious health and wellbeing concerns such as depression, anxiety, social exclusion therefore this will support the community and help to reduce a minor health concern becoming a major cause for concern.”
Email to find out more information Back4life@forthvalley.ac.uk