Nutrition & Fitness for Immigrant Community

Dear our  friends and our supporters,

We are looking for volunteers to help with Nutrition and Faintness Program as fitness coaches since our past coaches, Renee and Mary Ann, completed their volunteering period in January. Women are worried about their health after they lost a remarkable amount of weight and ended up gaining it back. It is hard for us, but we do not have any alternative choices.

This program is about changing the culture and eating habits of immigrants. Living in America is a different lifestyle. There is less walking and more driving, lack of access to fresh organic food, and less of manual work at home. As a result, all these factors lead to obesity and an unhealthy life.

We covered label reading, food facts, and healthy food cooking demonstration. We are planning to make the traditional meals from different countries healthier by substituting some unhealthy ingredients and the way of cooking by focusing on baking, grilling, steaming, etc.

In addition, I reached out to a volunteer who expressed her interest in helping with nutrition, on Wednesday April 12, 2017. She focuses on traditional food and substitutions. I sent her a volunteer agreement form and I am still waiting for the returned document in order to call our clients to set up time in order to layout the schedule and the syllabus.

On March 10th, I had the grand opportunity to be a guest speak at Women of Grace event organized by Parkview healthcare System (PHS). The Diversity Director of PHS reached out to me on April 15th and told me PHS is interested in supporting our program. We were very excited to hear that and hoping that women start to benefit from this program to maintain their healthy lifestyles and their families’

Moreover, the DWN and its partners were able to provide immigrant communities in Indianapolis with access to nutritional programs, healthy cooking, and smart shopping classes as well as access to education and resources about nutrition.  As a result, with the help of our donors, our volunteers, and our partners we were able to provide these women with service for their healthier lifestyle for themselves and their families.

Thank you so much for your support.

Dear friends,

Thank you for your generous support that helped our diverse community to learn about healthy food and fitness. Happy New Year to you all!  I hope that 2017 is great year for our generous donors and our beneficiaries.

After our successful pilot program, we, the Darfur Women Network (DWN) is working diligently to continue to secure a place for exercise and nutritional education. We partnered with the Islamic Association of Muslims of Indianapolis and Hoping for Hope.

We were able to have a nutritional education and cooking demonstration. We had an experience dietitian led the nutritional education demonstration.  The program was about making traditional food from many countries healthier. We substituted unhealthy ingredients with healthier options. However, our volunteers were too busy to continue with the program. Her absence affected the program and the families.

Since our fitness coaches, Renee and Mary Ann, completed their volunteering period, we are looking for volunteers for to help with fitness. Unfortunately, we haven’t found any yet. Women are worried about their health after they lost a remarkable amount of weight and they have gained it back. It is hard for us, but we don’t have any alternative choices.

Moreover, the DWN and its partners were able to provide immigrant communities in Indianapolis with access to nutritional programs, healthy cooking, and smart shopping classes as well as access to education and resources about nutrition.  As a result, with the help of our donors, our volunteers, and our partners we were able to provide these women with service for their healthier lifestyle for themselves and their families.

In 2017, we continue reaching out to different people and organizations to find those who are passionate to support women, immigrants, and healthy lifestyles for women to support us to achieve our goals.

Please support us, volunteer, share our link with your network, and give us feedback.

http://darfurwomennetwork.org/darfur-women-network-nutrition-label-reading-session/?

Thank you so much,                                                  

Mastora Bakhiet

Some volunteers and I designed a nutrition and fitness pilot program that focuses on women (immigrants from our host community) to work collectively to encourage them to overcome their challenges. The barriers that hinder them from accomplishing a healthy lifestyle are the lack of awareness about important of healthy eating and cooking healthy meals because they lack nutritional education.

In addition, religious obligation prohibits them from exercising while men are present and the monthly gym membership is unaffordable for low-income families.

The nutrition & fitness program started on September 28, 2015 and ended on February 24, 2016. The instructors provided 62 sessions at a total cost of $6000 (including fuel donated by the staff). The borrowed fitness materials and equipment totaled to $1,365.00. Additional equipment supplied by Center for Interfaith Cooperation (CIC) was not quantifiable. In addition, the equipped kitchen and a classroom as well as utilities were provided at no cost. The volunteers who participated in different stages of this project donated 590 hours.

The CIC helped arrange the use of the venue, exercise equipment and funded some of the ingrédients for nutrition sessions. CIC assigned an intern to reserve rooms for exercise and to facilitate any communication with others in the building. Additionally, the CIC secured an open kitchen with cooking equipment and a room for exercise at the Fairview Presbyterian Church at no cost.

We evaluated our pilot project and the result was showed that the project was successful and it inspired us to proceed.

What the women achieved was way beyond their original goal. Some lost a remarkable amount weight, some lost few pounds, and some didn’t lose or gain anything. However, we were confident and our self-esteem increased.

The unexpected achievement was that we had a deep discussion that led to self-discovery. We realized that we have never considered ourselves as one of our family members. Family members whom we take care of for years.

We help them with their needs, but we have never fulfill our needs. We have never had any support from all or some of our family members to have time for ourselves to exercise or to learn about healthy food to improve our health.

After the end of our successful program, we are hope to start our fitness program immediately to work on our challenges, to change our cultures to make exercise one of our important habits, and to learn different choice of healthy food and healthier lifestyles without jeopardizing our religious obligations.

Since April2016 to present, we have knocked on many doors looking for a location an exercise facility that has privacy and is separated from men and exercise or fitness classes that can be implemented while still wearing preferred traditional religious garments.

We hoped that our project could be funded by our Globalgiving partners. In addition, we failed to secure facilities or funds. We are a small organization and we do not have anyone to help us with our grant search and grant proposal writing.

Our most difficult challenges are having facilities, a paid fitness coach, insurance, and some materials and equipment.

The horrible consequences of not having our program are that we are gaining weight, lose hope and confidence. We have not adapted culture or an exercise habit yet.

We fail to continue exercising in a group to encourage each other.  We are looking forward to any great idea to help us to learn from our failure to resume to our lovely project to be a great example for other women to change their lives for the better. The important question for Darfur Women Network and its supporters and to GlobalGiving is, how do we keep the social impact that already project(s) had on the beneficiaries? Then, we can think about maximization of the impact.

Thank you

The Darfur Women Network would like to share its serous decision regarding its Nutrition and Fitness projects. We partner with Indianapolis Muslim Community Association and Hope for Helping to run the Nutrition project.  

We provide lectures and cooking demonstration about healthy food and now, we are working on cooking demonstration-substitution of some unhealthy ingredients for healthy ones when we cook our traditional food.

The next nutrition class is attentively set up on October 28.  This coming class will be about a Senegal dish (fish, vegetables, and rice). This class will help us, immigrants to learn about notorious facts of the Senegal dish – the traditional dish and the moderated dish.   

Moreover, we will discuss community gardens during our class to check on the participants to have idea about their perspective about it. It is the easy way to secure organic vegetable to support healthy eating and healthy cooking for our families because most of our participants are immigrants from low-income who can’t afford organic food shopping.

http://darfurwomennetwork.org/darfur-women-network-nutrition-label-reading-session/

Regarding fitness, we haven’t resumed it, yet. I believe that we failed to secure enough fund to run the program. I will share the story on GlobalGiving contest.

Please help us with idea and recommendation because all of our participants are hoping to start it as soon as possible.

Thank you so much for those who support us! Please continue your support to help us to achieve our goals.

The Darfur Women Network is grateful for its partnership with Globalgiving and its coalition to run the Nutrition and Fitness program effectively. 

We are on our fourth lecture about nutrition. We are planning cooking demonstration and working diligently to provide fitness service, but it is challenging. 

Our last session, Nutrition Label Reading took place on Tuesday, June 28, 6pm in the basement of Masjid Alfajr.

We are thankful you for your generous donation! Please continue help us to maximize our social impact on our beneficiaries. 

It is social change program, therefore, it needs  much effort to enable our immigrant community to change their cultures towards their eating habits and to adapt exercise and wellness actions to maintain their healthy lifestyles.

Having a registered dietitian with 30 year experience working for hospitals, clinics, and communities among our coalition is promising. 

Please check our link below and let’s know if you have question, feedback, or comments. 

http://darfurwomennetwork.org/darfur-women-network-nutrition-label-reading-session/?