When you ask people why they exercise, you expect them to say ‘to get fitter’, ‘to become healthier,’ or ‘to get stronger.’ It might therefore surprise you to hear that for our clients, ‘meeting people’ and ‘socialising’ sit top of the list.
A social gathering with purpose
One client very succinctly described coming to our class as a ‘social gathering with a purpose,’ which delights us as having people come to our classes to socialise sits high on our social impact criteria.
We encourage everyone to join in with exercise on a level that they feel comfortable with, even if it’s just a little waving of their arms. For us, exercise should be enjoyable for all our clients and every bit of movement, no matter how small, is doing good. We, therefore, work extremely hard to make our classes friendly and welcoming.
Considering most of our clients face mobility issues, for a variety of reasons getting out and about can be a challenge, so it makes sense that being able to socialise with others would rank highly and for some the fact they are getting fitter and stronger is merely a bonus to the social aspect.
Giving our clients a voice
It’s why we ask our clients regularly for feedback, as naturally, you could argue that the main reason for running our seated chair exercise and dancercise classes is to give people who are uncomfortable with mainstream classes and gyms the chance to improve their quality of life through exercise. However, client feedback had made it clear that the social aspect of our classes was highly important to them.
Enhancing lives in many ways
This feedback greatly helped with working on MOVEability’s purpose, and when defining how, in essence, we help our clients, it boiled down to ‘enhancing lives’ in so many ways (and not just our clients).
Here’s how…………
We give our clients a chance to socialise and meet new people.
We help them build strength and live more independent lives.
We give our partners – charities such as Connecting Communities in Berkshire, Get Berkshire Active, Eight Bells Mental Health and Parkinson’s UK – high-quality, fun and engaging classes to which they can confidently refer their clients.
We give social prescribers more choice – another place to refer their clients – we’re on the Joy App, by the way.
We give care home managers an extra reason for new residents to choose their care homes.
We give family members of our clients the joy of seeing their loved ones enhancing their lives.
And, of course, you can’t underestimate the draw of a cuppa and a biscuit!
Help us do more
If you have let us help you enhance your life in some way, thank you…….. and if you know anyone whose life we can help enhance, please share this with them and ask them to make contact.
If you would like to do something to help us enhance more lives – visit our crowdfunding page.