ASPIRE: addressing obesity and unemployment

What is ASPIRE?

C3 Collaborating for Health is working with 16 partner organisations to deliver ASPIRE (Adding to Social capital and Individual Potential In disadvantaged REgions) – an EU funded project addressing obesity and unemployment in France and England through a holistic approach to diet, physical activity, and employment support.

C3 and ASPIRE:

As part of ASPIRE, C3 has engaged with 7 communities in England and France using its innovative community engagement strategy CHESS® (Community Health Engagement Survey Solutions), which has delivered 7 community co-designed action plans for change. Learn more about CHESS®.

ASPIRE in Boscombe:

In Boscombe, C3’s Zoe Keeping has managed the delivery of the community’s CHESS® action plan. Having worked and lived in Boscombe for over 20 years Zoe is passionate about community driven change and ensuring all voices are heard! As such, Zoe has brought local residents together to grow, eat, cook, move together and lead healthier lives. Creating street art, organising litter picking, creating wild play areas, walking trails, providing healthy cooking classes and more. C3 has reached over 300 Boscombe community members!

The biggest thing for me has been the shift in the local community, seeing how people changed. It has gone from a question of can you do this Zoe? Or can the council do this? To how can we as a community make this happen? – Zoe Keeping, C3 Community Engagement Manager

ASPIRE in Lens and Loos-En-Gohelle:

Stephanie Gailiunas is a social worker, Naturopath and C3’s Community Engagement Facilitator in Lens and Loos-En-Gohelle France. To improve community health she has run healthy cooking classes, community events and workshops focussed on wellbeing, relaxation, and raising self-esteem. It is Stephanie’s work as a social worker and Naturopath in Lens that made her want to join C3 and the ASPIRE project, believing that being engaged at a community level
to bring people together around nutrition, cooking classes, and hiking is crucial to support them in leading a healthier life.

Stephanie is really good in engaging with the local community. She is lives in the area and has a very good understanding of the barriers that makes it difficult to eat healthily in the neighbourhood. – A participant after a healthy eating workshop

ASPIRE in Medway:

C3’s Lisa Malone has worked in Medway for the past 18 years and has been finding creative ways get the community eating better and moving more. Including cooking healthy pizzas, creating healthy snacks for a jubilee picnic, Zumba classes for plus-sized ladies, yoga classes, edible window box making, bee-bombing, word-hunts and more. Lisa has been featured on BBC Radio Kent for her work in Medway on the ASPIRE project. Excitingly, C3 has reached over 350 people in Kent.

Around 18-20 ladies attend a weekly yoga class; around 70% consider themselves overweight – and only 20% of them are in full-time work. I consider this a great success! – Lisa Malone, Community engagement facilitator

ASPIRE in Ham:

Having done a CHESS® walk with a group of very enthusiastic community members in Ham city centre, C3’s community facilitator Magali has been holding regular cooking classes and nutrition workshops for the local community in Ham centre social. It doesn’t stop there Magli has also taken opportunities to combine culture and hiking, organising community activities like a tour of Ham’s castle with the help of the association “Castle friends.” This combination of community and culture allowed people to not only get moving by walking along the canal but also helped them to discover an historic aspect of the town they did not know.

ASPIRE in Wimereux:

The community in Wimeureux have taken a modern approach to health, diet and fitness. As part of their CHESS® action plan they decided to develop an app and web platform. This works as a central database, giving local community members one place they can easily access to find out about upcoming events, local walking routes and opportunities for being more physically active, eating better, and developing their career skills in the area.

Make ASPIRE work for you – The ASPIRE toolkit

Do you want to lead a healthier life or gain self-confidence? Maybe you’re a local community worker or organisation that wants to improve the health of their community? Then this toolkit is perfect for you. C3 have been collaborating with fellow ASPIRE partner Vivons en Forme (VIF) – a social marketing organisation – to create resources that give communities the tools to make long term behavioural changes. From a healthy cookbook, tips for buying better food for less, workshops and more, C3 have adapted multiple resources on food, physical activity, sleep and wellbeing.

Get Moving Everyday

A resource designed to get people moving more in their day to day lives and a trainers guide.

Read our Get Moving Everyday – Leaflet, it provides tips that make it easier to get moving a little more everyday!

Make getting active fun with our Get Moving Everyday – Card game

Interested in running a workshop that teaches your community how to adopt better habits when it comes to physical activity? Download our Get Moving Everyday – Trainers guide

Improve your sleep

Eating healthily and moving more is great but this can all be for nothing if we struggle to sleep. When we’re tired it’s a lot harder to take care of ourselves.

Read our Improve your sleep – leaflet, providing tips that make it easier for you to get a good nights rest!

Interested in running a workshop that teaches your community how to adopt better habits when it comes to sleep? Try our Improve your sleep – Trainers Guide

Take care of yourself

So you’re moving more and sleeping well, what else is there? It’s important that we also take care of our wellbeing. Taking the time to do things that give us happiness and self-confidence is as important as keeping our bodies healthy. In these resources will look at a variety of ways you can take care of yourself, from time management tools, activities and more…

Read our Take care of yourself – leaflet, providing tips to improve your self-confidence and wellbeing!

Interested in running a workshop that teaches your community how to adopt better habits when it comes to self-care? Try our Take care of yourself – Trainers guide

Coming Soon!

Healthy tips to fill your basket

It’s easy to tell people to eat more healthily but improving our diet can seem expensive and complicated. Knowing how to make buying healthier food simple and affordable is the foundation of a healthy diet. In this resource we provide ways for people to fill their basket with healthy affordable food and make the process of shopping easier with shopping list templates and more.

Let’s get cooking

Now we’ve figured out how to buy healthy food at affordable prices lets cook some delicious meals. This leaflet and trainers guide provides simple ways to make the most of the food you’ve bought and show the fun side of cooking.

Easy cooking on a budget – cookbook

It’s all well and good telling people to eat better but cooking healthy and delicious meals on a budget can be a challenge. This cookbook provides easy and affordable recipes that feed up to six people. It’s perfect for people just starting their cooking journey and those looking for new recipes to try!