For the past 20 years, Communities ChooseWell has been supporting health and wellness across Alberta by promoting collaboration and sustainable change. As we celebrate this milestone anniversary, we asked some of our Champions and partners to reflect on how their perspectives on healthy eating and active living (HEAL) have evolved, the challenges they’ve encountered, and the ways Communities ChooseWell has impacted their communities.
By Beth Durnie
Responses have been edited slightly for length and clarity.
How has your relationship to HEAL changed over the last 20 years?
“The biggest thing that’s changed in my perspective on healthy eating and active living is how important your environment and what is around you is in impacting your choices. I think before, I always saw healthy eating and active living as sort of a personal choice. But through Communities ChooseWell, I realized the importance of having walkable communities and accessible, healthy, fresh food. And opportunities to get outside and socialize and be physical with other people in your community, and that a lot of the systemic issues with healthy eating and active living are really just issues of access.”
Patrick MacQuarrie – Alberta Recreation & Parks Association staff (Community ChooseWell Program Officer, 2011-2023)
What HEAL related challenges have you seen in your community?
“Accessibility to services is the first and foremost. […] So accessibility to knowledge is one aspect, but that knowledge is there because it passed on through our community. […] When we have accessibility to good quality food, we make good quality decisions.
Other barriers within the vein of knowledge have to do with a loss of understanding of traditional views of physical movement and healthy lifestyle. We have a lot of traditional games that have been lost in each community. They exist out there and there are Knowledge Holders who have this information, but it’s not as easily accessible when you’re rural or remote, and also when you’re growing up in an urban setting, away from your community, you have somewhat of a limited access to those Knowledge Holders as well.”
Jessica Smith – Communities ChooseWell Champion since 2017
How has Communities ChooseWell impacted your community?
“[Communities ChooseWell has] given us that energy and that motivation to keep doing a little bit more over and over again. I think ChooseWell gave us the motivation, because sharing what everybody else is doing, it’s like, ‘Well, that community is doing great things, we could do that.’ So it gave us that extra push to change up our programs regularly, [keeping them] fresh and active, [and to] try new things.
And then, [the Healthy Community Inspiration Awards] as well – in just the recognition. In recreation and sport, and especially non-profits, and even more so in Indigenous Communities, your clients don’t [say], ‘Hey, you’re doing a really great job at recreation.’
It’s a thankless job. […] It’s nice that ChooseWell’s out there and every year they do their awards, and now, somebody else is like, ‘Hey, good job!’ […] I think it just really motivates the staff and motivates the communities and gets them more involved.”
Julia Soucie – Communities ChooseWell Champion since 2012
What do you hope the next 20 years of Communities ChooseWell will look like?
“The connections that the ChooseWell team has made in all the communities, with all people, all across Alberta is just phenomenal. And we really see that with the Alberta Healthy Communities Symposium, watching how many people come from so many different communities, some from so far away to be part of that. [Champions] obviously find value in that connection. […] I hope that ChooseWell can just keep making [connections] and get bigger, and our symposium and everything will just continue to grow.”
Ashley Bolduc – Alberta Blue Cross, partners since 2019
What is a favourite Communities ChooseWell memory you have?
“We had to do bum spelling. [The staff] lined us all up, so there’d be probably twenty of us, ten on each side, facing each other, like a team, and you had to spell your name with your butt, and then the first team to finish, wins. But my name’s Michele, and how do you do an E? So it was the funniest thing, because [there were] all these people that didn’t know each other and didn’t know what to expect from the program [but], by the end of this bum spelling, we’re laughing so hard that you couldn’t not be friends.
It’s so hard because there’s so many good [memories]. Just every time we get together, it just seems like family. It’s like homecoming.”
Michele Geistlinger – Communities ChooseWell Champion since 2005
The Communities ChooseWell family continues to grow; inspiring, and supporting HEAL champions across the province. For the past 20 years, champions have found connection, community, and celebration through Communities ChooseWell. Let’s continue to grow the Communities ChooseWell family of champions in the next 20 years, and beyond!