Active Businesses: Bringing business and communities together through physical activity

Wednesday 11 March 2020

The physical activity programme for businesses in Palermo, part of the Erasmus+ Sport project Active Businesses, has seen local sports trainers carrying out weekly exercise classes within the companies participating in the project and delivering activities outside the companies to promote healthy active lifestyles for staff, their families and the wider community. The intervention strategies to be adopted in order to create reproducible and adaptable models to the various circumstances have been analysed and the practical programme is now underway engaging with a wide variety of businesses across Palermo.

As well as delivering the physical activity programme within working environments, local events have been launched involving workers, employees outside of the workplace.

The first event took place on 23rd February 2020 in conjunction with GiocaGin, a national event that takes place simultaneously all over Italy, and aims to involve young and old people in different sports activities. The event was held at PalaOreto in Palermo and saw the Active Businesses sports trainers deliver different sessions related to the expertise and the physical activity programme such as Yoga, Pilates and Martial arts. The event was targeted at participants of the project, stakeholders and community members interested in participating and knowing more about the Active Businesses project and results. In particular, there were two moments of muscle activation, one in the morning, one immediately before lunch, which involved almost 60 people.

Currently, these activities are unfortunately on hold in compliance with the Italian Prime Minister’s Decree of 4th March 2020, due to COVID-19 pandemic, but we hope to organize soon new activities once the emergency is over!