Pegasus Health media release: 21st June 2019

There’s no such thing as a free lunch – and this was evident yesterday (20th June) when guests attending the Active Canterbury Network’s 10-year anniversary celebration had to pedal their way to lunch with a ride on the ‘Smoothie Bike’.

“Promoting physical activity is what the Active Canterbury Network is all about” says coordinator Nadine Milmine. “So even though we’re here to celebrate today, we still made sure our guests had a wee workout before they tucked into some cake!”

The Active Canterbury Network (ACN) is a collaboration of local organisations and service providers focussed on promoting active lifestyles. The network supports local physical activity providers to build their skills and knowledge through training workshops, mentoring, nutrition programmes and networking opportunities. The group is also an avid supporter of the hugely successful Walking Festival and they have just completed an online Activities Directory, which details all of the physical activity classes, groups and programmes on offer in Canterbury.

Diana Saxton from the Christchurch City Council is one of the group’s original members. She says the network has been successful because of its spirit of collaboration.

“‘He waka eke noa’ really sums us up” she said, “meaning we’re all in this together. There are few places around the country where organisations from the sport, health and recreation sector come together regularly to work in such a collaborative way. This culture is one of the key reasons why the Network has been so effective and successful over the past 10 years.”

Rebecca Logan works for Sport Canterbury. When she started in her role just over two years ago, she was tasked with getting 3,000 older adults engaged with Canterbury’s 150 community-provided physical activity classes.

“Because of ACN, I had immediate access to all of this information and all of these people in the community who could help me. Very quickly, in fact within the first eight months, we had achieved our target. This success was entirely due to ACN’s established networks and relationships.

"Every DHB region around the country has someone doing my role and I know many of them have really struggled because they haven’t known how to reach out and connect. I was very lucky to have started in the CDHB region because those connections were already there for me.”

The ACN membership includes: