Healthy Minds, Healthy Bodies

The project to purchase fitness equipment is now on the Peace Corps web site! Here is the link where you can contribute: Healthy Minds, Healthy Bodies

Thanks for your support!

Fitness time!

I never expected to be working on a fitness center as a Peace Corps volunteer! And I didn’t learn until I arrived in Bulgaria that obesity is becoming a widespread problem here. Perhaps dietary changes (the increased availability of sweets and processed food) combined with a more sedentary lifestyle is to blame. The village where I live is no exception.

In Gyovren there are 4 factories which employ over 200 women who have repetitive jobs at sewing machines from 8:00am until 5:00pm or later. Chronic neck and back pain are the unfortunate by-products of their labor. Another demographic is women who have young children. In Bulgaria, mothers get two years of paid maternity leave! They can also take a third year without pay, but still reserve their position at their previous place of employment. During the summer, these moms congregate at a café that has some outdoor tables where the kids can play and they can socialize. But when the weather is cold—6 months or more of the year—there is no appropriate place for them to gather or get out of the house. And then there are the men. Most men in Gyovren work in the construction industry. Construction jobs tend to be seasonal—they are more plentiful during the spring and summer. Cafes in the winter are full of unemployed men, passing the time with coffee or alcohol, cards or backgammon. Last but not least, young people express great enthusiasm about the potential for having a place to work-out.

With all of these factors in mind, my counterparts had the idea for a fitness project, using a room in the cultural center. The room that they suggested was the only spare room that belonged to the cultural center at the time: a previous discotech in the basement with less than 8 foot ceilings, lack of ventilation, mold problems, and two tiny windows below ground level. Not exactly ideal, but we started making plans for the project anyway.

As we got further along, the mayor heard about our plans. He came to me and told me what we had already noticed—that the room had some serious deficiencies. As an alternative, he suggested that we look into using the room that used to house the central telephone (during communism, villages had one telephone and a “telephone room”). This room was ideal. It’s 30 square meters in size. It has tall ceilings, three large windows, and no major problems. And, it’s located on the first floor of the cultural center—right next to the stairway that leads to the library where I work. I had no idea it was there!

Just one problem…we didn’t own the room. Sometime after the central telephone was no longer in use, the ownership of the room was given over to a telephone company—Vivacom. For the past 10 years, the room had been sitting unused and locked. Ramadan had tried once to get ownership in order to have a space for a computer lab, but he didn’t get very far before someone told him to “send a letter to Sofia if you have a complaint.”

I asked Ramadan for a contact person and started making phone calls. Lots of phone calls. Amazingly enough, just a few weeks later, three Vivacom employees (from Sofia, Plovdiv, and Devin) came to Gyovren to see the room for themselves and to make a decision about whether they would rent or sell to us. One of the men brought keys to the room and unlocked it so we could have a look inside—bare walls, a large towerish thing with wires and cables, and a sink on the other side of the room. It was perfect! The men went with me upstairs and got right to business—did we want to rent or buy. “Buy,” I said—thinking about how problematic a monthly payment would be. Okay, they answered, how much would you be willing to pay? I asked if they could wait for Ramadan, whom I had hurriedly called once I knew the men were actually coming. Caught off guard, he beat around the bush, but eventually managed to mention 500 leva. The Vivacom men looked at each other. “Could we pay 1,000?” they asked. No, not possible. “Okay then,” the man from Sofia said, “I think we can arrange to have the room given over to the cultural center as a donation.”

And then they were gone! Had I heard correctly?! I was amazed—employees from a large corporation had, in a 30 minute meeting, decided to donate property to a village where they had no connections. I am extremely grateful to these three men, who then made the idea appealing to the Vivacom board which approved the decision on July 21^st. By mid October, thanks to many Vivacom staff people who worked with us, we had all the documentation and legal ownership of the room!

In the meantime, an unexpected opportunity for funding came about. VAST, a Peace Corps related initiative that gives volunteers access to funding for health related projects—specifically those focused on HIV/AIDS—was having a seminar in late June. A fellow volunteer who was also interested in starting a village fitness center called me and pointed out that our ideas could fit within the VAST requirements. We expanded our vision—instead of just a place to work out, why not make these rooms a source of all kinds of health and wellness information—HIV/AIDS education included! We attended a conference in Sliven, Bulgaria about the VAST application process, checked prices for fitness equipment in Plovdiv on the trip home, and turned in our proposals and budgets almost immediately.

We were approved! Funding was limited to around $1,500. For Gyovren, this meant that we could afford to do the repairs to the old central telephone room and buy a few fitness items: an elliptical, an exercise bike, light free weights, yoga mats, and jump ropes. Equipment that would mainly be used for cardio classes. I told my counterparts that after implementing this stage we would look into finding other opportunities for more large-scale equipment.

In the past two weeks (since having official ownership of the room) we have almost finished fixing up the room with the help of volunteers from the village. We have scheduled the “grand opening” for December 1^st, at which point we will have Pilates and aerobic workout classes. However, in order to become sustainable and to reach a wider demographic, there are still several items that we would like to purchase: a treadmill, bench press, combined arm machine, heavier free weights, and a projector for showing fitness DVDs and health related presentations. Our budget for these items is $2,838. I have submitted a proposal through the Peace Corps Partnership Program which provides a way for volunteers to seek donations from friends and family in the states. Once this project is approved by Peace Corps Washington, I will send the link where donations can be made. I am truly excited about the potential for positive change that this project brings. I am also thankful that for all of the decisions and steps still ahead of us (which will require a large measure of cultural understanding), I have friends and co-workers who will do the work alongside me. It will be an adventure!