Photo: Contributed

Four fourth-year nursing students are hoping to help the Penticton community get moving, in partnership with the Kidney Wellness Hub.

The Walking to Wellness program is a free, structured walking program organized by the Kidney Foundation and is open to everyone. The meetups currently run in Richmond, Surrey, Vancouver and Victoria, with Kamloops, Kelowna, Penticton, Prince George and Whitehorse groups being built.

Students Jessie Fleet, Courtney Price, Emma Armstrong and Montana Smith are hoping to get the meetups off ground and happening in Penticton.

"The program itself is developed by a kinesiologist. It provides training to build fitness levels, strength and endurance and prevent chronic disease," Price said.

"We were really looking at something that could really benefit the health of our community and through sort of word of mouth, we got in touch with the Kidney Foundation. We learned about this Walking to Wellness program, and we thought it just really aligned with what we were trying to do, what we want to do as nurses," Fleet added.

Their research had shown that many people are not meeting physical activity needs, but the program is low-barrier and non discriminatory, offering multiple levels of walking for any fitness level.

The program comes out of the Kidney Foundation's Wellness Hub, which was developed during COVID to help people manage their health when they couldn't attend regular programs.

"Walking to Wellness started out where you would do it independently," Christina Bennett, the Kidney Foundation director of volunteers and community development, said.

"But if you have the social aspect or the friends or the community connection to get out and get walking, it's more fun. There's a little bit more accountability. It's still available for people to work on it independently, but by setting up locations in the community, it was starting to also target the social isolation."

Now, the students are in need of volunteers to get the program off its feet.

Volunteers must be at least 18 years or older, enjoy working with others, have a supportive and encouraging mindset, and need to be able to comfortably walk around five kilometres.

While the emergency first aid CPR level C is not required, it is a bonus to have. Otherwise, the Kidney Foundation will provide the training.

"Volunteers will show up a little bit before everybody else gets there, greet everybody, help check everybody in, and then they're gonna lead one of the groups walking," Smith said. "They also lead the groups through some warm up exercises, just making sure that everybody's in a proper space to do some exercise."

After volunteers go through the registration process, they will take a two hour training session to learn the warm up, the cool down, the stretching exercises, and any other necessary info.

"In addition to that, there's also weekly health and wellness topics that the volunteer can kind of present on to engage the participants," Fleet said.

Price said all four of them completed the training and felt like they would be confident in running the program.

The walking group will be held at Cherry Lane mall, since it always has an established walking program that happens before the mall opens, along with being a strong location as its one a bus route and will keep people protected from the elements.

"It is suitable for someone who might have limited mobility. And one of our programs, we actually have someone who uses a walker. So just for the safety and security of individuals that feel more confident on that space versus trail walking," Bennett said.

She added that the foundation is excited about getting the volunteers going in Penticton, especially speaking with dialysis unit nurses in the community that are interested in getting their patients out and walking.

"By us being in the community, having these programs and activities also helps us on the education side, on [telling people] 'Take care of your kidneys,'" she said.

To apply to be a volunteer, click here or check out the poster below.

To find out more about the program, head to the Kidney Hub Website here.

For further inquiries or any questions, email [email protected]

Photo: Contributed