Cardinal Zumba Helps the Community
Cardinal Wellness students engage as program directors, research assessment coordinators, nutrition specialists, exercise physiologists, and health promotion managers. They are trained in the details of each position and rotate every month into each role, to ensure that they feel comfortable with all aspects of implementing a community-based program. Our students provide consistent testimony to the ways in which involvement in our program impacts them personally and professionally. It is especially important to provide students with the opportunity to learn management, communication, and leadership skills while working with real-world partners, as well as how to be innovative to meet the needs of people in Muncie.
In this, the program provides mutual benefit to both the Muncie community and Ball State students. Since the fall of 2017, our program has served over 400 community citizens, within and beyond the Muncie community, with guided exercise, nutrition classes, and health and wellness assessments. We seek to continue the program, hoping that it will serve as an exemplary model of a long-term campus-community partnership.
Our goal is to continue our exercise and nutrition program for Muncie’s Whitely neighborhood and beyond. The program has been a staple in the community for 2 years, with many community members relying on our program to meet their health and wellness goals. Our research demonstrates that we are reducing obesity and successfully educating the public about better nutritional choices. The absence of our program in the community would be felt by those who rely on it to meet their needs, as there are few similar resources for low-income audiences.
The funds will raise will be used to support the nutrition education food program through December 2020, as our current funding mechanism for the nutrition portion will expire in December 2019. We have received $6,000 per year thus far, through a generous donation from IU Health Ball Memorial Hospital. The funds provide the means for bi-weekly nutrition education classes, with food samples and food and kitchen staples that participants can take home to their families, as well as food and kitchen supplies for the nightly food demonstrations after Zumba class. Without continued funding, we will be unable to continue a significant element of the program – the nutrition education and nutritious food sample portion.
