FAMILIES from Kerang, Cohuna and surrounds can celebrate the end of Term 2 in style thanks to Northern District Community Health.
NDCH is holding two free, Family Fun Days this weekend, at both Kerang Community Market and Cohuna Farmers and Makers market.
Kerang’s Family Fun Day will run from 9:30am to 1:30pm on the Saturday, while the activities at Cohuna will run from 9am to 1pm the next day.
NDCH health promotion worker Rachel Clarke said the family fun days coincided with the end of the Future Healthy program funding.
“Last year we received a grant from VicHealth to create healthier futures for young people,” she said. “As a part of that, we’ve been running different free events to get young people active.
“We have previously done things like our Teen Gym, Hapkido lessons, fitness sessions, our StoryWalks, a lot of different things.
“So just to tie it all up, we thought we would do a fun day for the family and bring rock climbing, table tennis and some different active things.”
As part of VicHealth’s Future Healthy program, NDCH received the grant in 2022 to help create healthier futures for young people in the region
Ms Clarke said the Family Fun Days had been designed around survey responses of local young people.
“We surveyed 561 young people at the beginning of the year and asked them what they wanted,” she said. “We’ve designed this around the responses we received.
“Often kids are only involved in organised sports, which can cost a lot of money.
“We wanted to show the community that there is a lot of free things that people can get involved in as well.
“Children need to have 60 minutes of physical activity per day, so it’s good to show them a variety of things they can do to be active.
“Children obviously learn better if they’re participating in physical activity, so it’s really beneficial for not only their academic development but also has a lot of health benefits as well.”
Ms Clarke said NDCH wanted to help support community markets while also providing a fun mix of activities.
“We chose the community markets because this is a community event and we wanted to support the markets as well.
“We’re hoping we can help draw an even bigger crowd to the markets. They mentioned that they don’t often get younger people at the market, it’s more of an older crowd.
“They’re hoping that this will bring a new demographic to the market, who will see that it’s a really good event and return every month.
“It’ll be a really good family-day-out, a good way for families to connect with one another and with their wider community, for no cost.”
