By Ebba Ritzen
One of Northern Ireland’s leading martial arts organisations has received a grant from Heart Research UK for its new project which will give disadvantaged young people the tools and skills to keep a healthy lifestyle. Our Healthy Heart Grants fund community projects across the United Kingdom.
ZKJ Dojo was set up in 1998 with the goal of promoting all aspects and benefits of martial arts. Since, it has grown into a key pillar in the community, working to engage young people on the margins of society in positive lifechanging activities.
They recently won the World Amateur Award for Changing Lives through sport, and work with partners like Comic Relief to provide esteem building programmes for youths affected by negative influences in their lives.
Studies the organisation have carried out with their young people have shown that they don’t bother to keep a healthy lifestyle, believing that what they do now won’t affect their health in the future. ZKJ want to change this.
Their new project, called ‘You’re All Heart’, will target hard to reach people with a lifechanging programme which combines the many health benefits of martial arts with their youth work approach to build self-esteem and a positive attitude to long term health and nutritional goal setting. They want to create real bonds between participants and mentors with the aim to build self-confidence, resilience, and improve decision making in relation to keeping a healthy heart.
The project’s home will be the well-known ZKJ Dojo which is open to participants from all over Newtownabbey and wider Belfast. These areas have the seen some of the highest levels of deprivation over the years which inevitably has affected young people’s health. People taking part in the project will be ages 5-30, where the youngest will be educated as a preventative aspect with the hope of teaching them early about lifestyle impact on the heart. The older participants are faced with a myriad of challenges in their lives such including unemployment and educational underachievement. This kind of stress can have bad impact on healthy habits and the heart and ZKJ are hoping their project will give their participants the tools and support to build a healthy future.
Apart from free access to martial arts training, the participants will take part in workshops on all aspects of health such as nutrition, alcohol awareness and mindfulness. They’ll also become part of the coach mentoring team, developing their coaching skills for employment through working alongside qualified coaches and helping out with classes.
Danny Corr, project leader at ZKJ, said:
‘We’re hoping to give these young people the tools and skills to set their own goals for their heart health, which would impact not only themselves but also the community very positively.
‘We know through our work that there’s a real gap in our young people’s awareness of how lifestyle affects the heart, so we’re very grateful to Heart Research UK for granting us the funding for this project.’
Kate Bratt-Farrar, Chief Executive at Heart Research UK, said:
‘Our Healthy Heart Grants are based on the belief that community organisations know best how to promote heart health in their own community. We’re pleased to award this grant to ZKJ and their project which supports young people in deprived areas to take charge of their own health.’
