Event brings health education for all to Garfield Park
Fitness classes help start Black Culture Wellness Campaign
Participants stood with their fists in front of their face, ready to throw punches to the beat, their feet shoulder width apart as the instructor, Seobia Rivers, had shown them.
The beat dropped, and the dozen participants started swinging, first a quick punch, then a hook, then a combination of moves. “Knuck If You Buck” by Crime Mob played as Rivers, the kickboxing instructor, described her next move and the group followed.
“Yeah we knuckin’ and buckin’ and ready to fight,” the hip-hop group raps.
The kickboxing class was part of a day focused around health and wellness at the Garfield Park Gold Dome Field House.
Community members got a taste of several types of workout classes and listened to speakers talk about how they could improve their diet and take care of their health.
“My class, I want you to think about it as this is a physical workout, but it’s also a mental workout as well,” Rivers said before starting her class. “This is your time to practice talking to yourself, cheering yourself up.”
The Garfield Park Rite to Wellness Collaborative hosted the event as a pre-launch to its Black Culture Wellness Campaign, which will offer fitness activities, wellness workshops and nutrition education around various locations near Garfield Park.
The collaboration will offer programs like nutrition fairs, parenting classes, nutrition classes and exercise programs in the neighborhood’s park district spaces and in some school buildings, Crawford said.
Saturday’s event included Afrobeat fitness, kickboxing, tai chi, senior chair workout,
“My class, I want you to think about it as this is a physical workout, but it’s also a mental workout as well. This is your time to practice talking to yourself, cheering yourself up.”
African dance, African drumming and line dancing. The workout activities were separated by discussions about the benefits of a plant-based diet and health and healthy parenting.
“Chair exercise means that we value our elders and we’re gonna be intentional about developing exercises that helps them get their blood rate up,” said Theodore
Joseph (TJ) Crawford, executive director of the Rite to Wellness Collaborative.
The pre-launch event was also a way to show the community what they could expect to see more regularly as Rite to Wellness works toward their goal of opening a wellness campus in Garfield Park. The campus would incorporate fitness, health, mental health, and
financial resources all in one place, Crawford said.
“So everything you see today speaks to health, wealth, wellness,” Crawford said. “And it’s a reflection of the things that we value and the principles that guide our work.”
Letti Butler, a resident of nearby Homan Square Park, sat to rest after line dancing to a couple songs with a group of participants toward the end of Saturday’s event.
She participated in all the classes, but her favorite was Sadeek Colquitt’s discussion about moving to a plantbased diet.
She said she would like to see similar events happen more frequently.
The collaborative’s Black Culture Wellness Campaign
has five aspects, Crawford said — creating and implementing a quality-of-life plan, building the wellness center, creating a Madison and Pulaski corridor plan, “neighborhood activation” which looks at ways to use vacant lots and buildings in a way that improves the community, and a behavior change marketing campaign.
“A behavior change marketing campaign essentially uses traditional and nontraditional marketing techniques, but specifically to be able to improve social determinants and spur ideas and thoughts that influence actions and habits that lead to a better state of health and well-being,” Crawford said.
The collaborative works toward their goals with
the understanding that members will determine the future of their own community, he said. Garfield Park residents are invited to participate in planning and implementation of the collaboration’s programs and goals, and can attend virtual town halls to discuss the community’s needs. The next virtual meeting is Monday, Feb. 14.
“For us, health and wellness is an inside-out job. So not only is it from inside the community or a particular space, it’s also from inside each individual person,” Crawford said. “So you want to raise the vibration in every individual.”
— Seobia Rivers, instructor