Mt Eden Rotary Club’s inaugural free WELLBEING DAY OUT at the Mt Eden Village Centre introduced the local community to a number of organisations and activities as part of a free and open-access general health and wellbeing initiative as well as boosting the profile of Rotary within the local community. Shown here are the Rotaractors.
 
On Saturday 4 May 2019, from 9am to 4pm, the Mt Eden Rotary Club held its inaugural free WELLBEING DAY OUT at the Mt Eden Village Centre, 449 Mt Eden Rd. The intention of the event was to introduce the local community to a number of organisations and activities as part of a free and open-access general health and wellbeing initiative (reflecting the fact that the club’s membership includes a number of health professionals) as well as boost the profile of Rotary within the local community. The date chosen was the first Saturday after the school holidays and we were extremely lucky with the weather on the day.
 
The day commenced with club members arriving at 8am to set up tables and arrange the layout for the rest of the day. The setup was in two parts.
 
The small room inside the venue (the lounge) was set up to play host to seven workshops during the day, which centred on the following topics (in order of occurrence):
 
1. Zumba workshop
2. Hatha Yoga workshop
3. Meditation workshop
4. Mindfulness workshop
5. Food allergy workshop
6. Self defence workshop
7. A further Hatha Yoga workshop
 
Concurrently, the larger hall area (adjacent to the workshops room) was set up to host information stalls and displays from a number of organisations including Allergy NZ, Asthma NZ, Fire and Emergency NZ, For the Love of Bees Community Garden, Get-Outside, Heart Foundation, Home and Family Counselling, Mapura Studios, Mt Eden Yoga, NZ College of Chiropractic, Rotaract Club of Auckland City, Rotary Club of Mt Eden, Volunteering Auckland and White Ribbon.
 
A number of activities were available from the stalls including, but not limited to, free virtual reality “Escape My House” experiences, free spinal checks, free blood pressure checks, free lungs checks (via peak flow meter test) and separate quizzes for adult and child attendees (with the quizzes designed to encourage attendees to visit the individual stalls). The emphasis of the stalls was very much on providing information; no commercial activity was undertaken.
 
The day proceeded well with the attendance being stronger in the morning. A tally was kept of the indicative numbers attending via means of online registration through meetup, facebook and email RSVPs as well as free raffle registrations on the day. The workshops were well attended (several of the individual workshop sessions had > 30 attendees; and some people attended more than one workshop).
 
The number of members of the public attending the event was in excess of 100.
 
A feedback form was available on the day for attendees to fill out (in return, we entered the respondent into a free raffle). In addition, a survey was sent out to both attendees from the public and attending organisations after the event. The bulk of the feedback received was overwhelmingly positive. The organisations attending indicated that they found the opportunity to network with other not-for-profit organisations to be very useful. In addition, while the organisations attending obviously had to have someone give up their time, they appreciated that they were able to have an information stall at no cost (as we understand that some expos now charge high exhibition fees).
 
Looking ahead, our intention is to hold the event on an annual basis. Our preliminary thoughts are for a bigger event (potentially with a larger number of workshops – which were a strong drawcard) held over a slightly shorter period of time (say from 10am to 2pm); we would also like to broaden the WELLBEING focus to include sustainability, environmental and conservation-oriented free workshops and stalls. In the leadup to the WELLBEING DAY OUT, we were approached by three community organisations that expressed an interest in working with us on future events.
 
We are extremely grateful for the Albert-Eden Local Board’s support and funding. This fact was recognized in all of our promotional material (event listings, banner, poster, flyers, web site). The funding that we received was mostly applied towards venue hire and promotional activity (banner, promoted post on facebook, eventfinda featured listing, and printing) as shown beliow. We would appreciate any future assistance that the local board can afford us in organising such events.
 
We are also very grateful to the organisations, workshop presenters, Mt Eden Rotary club members and Rotaract Club of Auckland City members who participated on the day, as well as the other businesses and individuals who donated goods to make the event as cost-effective as possible.
 
Event Listings:
 
Photo Album