Innovation Fund Feedback from our friend Chahrazad at WAND UK

WAND UK was awarded the Innovation Fund to facilitate a series of dance workshops aimed to develop women’s confidence, improve skills and to improve mental health and wellbeing and fitness through ‘Be Active’.

The first half of the program was delivered face to face but the second part of the program has to be performed via Zoom due to covid-19 pandemic. The first sessions were dedicated to contemporary and the remaining was a cocktail of dances which were chosen by participants (street dance, samba, Zumba).

An average of 10 women per session attended during the reporting period and a total of 12 dance sessions took place. All dance sessions started with a dynamic warm-up/ stretching and at the end by isolation movements for different parts of the body (feet and ankles neck and head).

Chahrazad stated that at the end of the sessions, refreshment fruits were made available to promote socialising/networking among our beneficiaries and discuss what went well and what went wrong.

Most of participants expressed that it helped them to reduce a pain in their back, it helped the whole body to workout, to reduce stress, it helped them to get better balance and ease their worries. They also highlighted that they felt more bonded with other participants.

Feedback from participants includes:

“Dancing makes me happy and it lifts my spirit up”.

“I find many dancing movements under Zumba classes are the best. Especially low impact is suitable for my age group. I also like challenge and join high impact as well”.

“In Covid-19 lock down the online dancing movement and Zumba kept me going. I am grateful for that”.

“It was great, makes my body to be active the whole day and feel happy. I feel so glad when I see other participants dancing together, it helped me feel less isolated”.

“The sessions made staying at home and lockdown bearable and definitely bring a breath of fresh air to the week”.

“The dance sessions gave me much more energy and helped me to be physical active”.

“Feel fit, happier after every session and in a very good mood”.

Chahrazad fed back: “All participants are 100% happy to take part again in these sessions. Most participants expressed that the sessions helped them feel less isolated. All participants rated the sessions 5/5. We are planning to run more sessions if we can get funding for the project”.