Project title: You’re All Heart
Region: Belfast, Northern Ireland
Award amount: £7,000
Project dates: June 2022 – May 2023
This Healthy Heart Grant project has now finished, read on for the project highlights.
The Problem
West Belfast, where this project took place, has the highest levels of deprivation and child poverty in Northern Ireland and is amongst the highest in the UK. Previous studies have found that many young people within this area do not follow a healthy lifestyle and have a real lack of understanding about the long-term impact of their current behaviours on their future health. These people have been left out of their community and castigated and receive minimal support.
The Project
You’re All Heart is a project that aimed to combine martial arts with youth work to build up the self-esteem of young people whilst helping them to create a positive attitude about long-term health. They provided open access to martial arts, health and nutrition sessions and daily training sessions for young people aged 5-30 years.
With the participants often coming from a background of poverty, unemployment and educational underachievement, this project really focussed on inspiring them to follow a healthier lifestyle and becoming responsible for themselves and the community around them. Nightly training sessions were held at the Dojo and included fitness, nutrition, and focused goal setting which were tailored to the needs of the group and/or individuals. As well as this, workshops were ran once a week and covered heart health, nutrition, alcohol awareness, and mindfulness with personal development sessions also integrated into this. This allowed the young people to improve their cognitive decision making in relation to a healthy heart and lifestyle.
Project Highlights
ZKJ’s project You’re All Heart greatly exceeded the expected number of beneficiaries by over double, with 250 people directly benefiting from this programme. The young people have become responsible young adults, taking control of their health and therefore easing the burden on the health service and freeing up the service for those who are truly in need. Over 100 of the participants got enrolled onto an MMA coaching programme and successfully achieved their level 1 coaching qualification meaning that more young people can become healthier. Due to the success and increased demands of the programme, it ended up continuing to run until September 2023 and then has been integrated into the day-to-day training and mentoring at the ZKJ Dojo. The You’re All Heart programme worked with the local community and youth groups, as well as engaging parents and family members to help sustain the project. These participants have become positive role models and peer examples for their friends and acquaintances.
Ben’s story (project participant):
Ben is a fantastic example of how the You’re all Heart Programme with support from Health Research UK can change lives dramatically and successfully.
Ben joined the programme as a young man with low self confidence in his physical appearance which in turn was effecting him mentally. In an era were the physical is often how young people are judged been felt very low and felt himself going into a place of depression and self loathing. Ben loved to train and was part of his school rugby team. However after leaving school Ben found himself in a spiral of unhealthy eating and life choices which were almost changing his personality from a confident , intelligent and outgoing young man to someone who became a bit of a recluse.
Ben asked could he be part of the project and threw himself into it with vigour. Ben was a talented athlete but had no confidence in himself. Coaches and mentors worked with him in small groups and in one to one scenarios and soon found out his goal was to become an MMA athlete and compete at a high level.
At the start of the programme Ben weighed in at 110kg. He found himself sluggish, tired all the time and with no will to do anything but eat and play X Box.
The project leaders gave Ben responsibility in helping younger participants, they provided a bespoke training programme and worked with Ben on his nutritional choices, showing him how to prepare his own healthy meals.
This year Ben became that MMA competitor he dreamed off and is now on a winning streak in his chosen sport. But more importantly Ben has transformed physically and mentally and is a credit to himself and the project. He was successful in qualifying as a Level 3 Coach, is currently studying Journalism in University and is now a healthy 70kg, dropping over 30 kilos in the space of less than a year.
Ben says: “This project has changed my life”.
