On 7 June 2021 the North-West University (NWU) kicked off its annual MOVE for Wellness challenge for the fourth consecutive year.

This 12-week physical activity programme is sponsored by 4D HEALTH and hosted by the NWU across its three campuses. The challenge will run until 30 August 2021, and teams are already up and running, and accumulating and logging steps on a weekly basis.

The aim of this initiative is to promote the importance of healthy living, team building and overall wellbeing among NWU employees.

“Leading an active lifestyle has numerous advantages. Our vision is to have healthy and well-balanced employees at the NWU,” says Kehumile Katametsi from NWU Wellness.

Through this, NWU Wellness is trying to minimise the risk of NWU employees developing lifestyle diseases – and high-risk comorbidities for Covid-19 – such as diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity. The initiative includes physical activities such as cycling, running, swimming and walking. 

How it works

Participants need to be part of a team of three people led by a team captain, whose main purpose is to encourage and motivate the team to use different routes and/or activities to increase their step count. The idea is to walk, cycle, run, or swim anytime, anywhere - and have fun doing it. Every participant then records their daily number of steps or kilometres – monitored by a pedometer or an app on a cell phone. The weekly totals are then submitted to the team captain, who logs them.