Walktober 2011

In October 2011, 6 committed Wokabaot Jalens teams signed up to compete in an online pedometer challenge, organized by the Australian Government. This program is free of charge and all you need is a pedometer, a team of 4 and internet access. 

It is a very challenging program – 1700 (!) individuals from Australia participated, both men and women. “After the first week we realized that our Vanuatu teams are in the top scoring teams!” 

Four weeks of hard walking have come to an end and three of the Vanuatu teams are among the top 10 teams of all 444 teams! These enthusiastic teams were highly committed and managed to walk up to 40.000 steps a day. 

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

Read the full story here.

looking back at the walktober challenge 2011. One participants shares her story:

We thought we (our team) give this challenge a try: Not only were we walking, it was a great way of sharing and learning about new healthier experiences that we are facing through the challenge. 

We were also looking for ways to improve our fitness (i.e climbing hills, walking certain distances, or walking at a certain pace). We were walking constantly to shops, bus stops, to pick up print outs instead of sending someone else to pick it up etc :)))
 

Personally this online challenge has boosted my energy to where I am now. I have been walking already so the online challenge enabled me to increase my steps and gradually try and increase it daily over the course of the challenge.

We have a great team leader who continuously encouraged our team to walk more. The results during the challenge for me is; some weight loss and an increase in my energy levels. 

Our team (Vanuatu Eagles) is continuing to walk twice a week eventhough the challenge ended and we have other interested friends who want to join our team to walk.

Thank you for making it possible for us to participate.  And if there is another one in the future, please count us in!

Best regards

XXX

Continued commitment

Hi again, 
we will try and send you some pictures soon,  as our walking sessions still continues after the October Walk ended last week. It's twice a week group walking - Monday and Thursday.

Oh Katja, other women are so interested and already we have a new member walking with us now with no pedometer - she does not care.  By the way Katja can you help us buy/order more pedometers at our own cost, I tried asking transport @ ... but they were unable to assist.

Thank you tumas
xxx

Walktober challenge experiences

Gud morning team,

wow! 

 

Dora, I am so excited for you, that longfala road to black sands and malapoa stage area and return is a long walk, me few steps lower than your one, just 42,971 steps... great am happy for all of your effort. 

 

 

Some pictures from yesterdays exercises. This is the walking distances that makes that steps for all of us. 

 

Sharing this pictures with you all from my mobile phone. its not really clear :)) but at least something..

 

Keep walking for your health purposes. All the best for today.

 

with much love,

XXX

Vanuatu eagles - week 3

Hi Katja and thanks for the reminder.  Yeps its the last week of the October Walk and I know many of us have done extra kms last weekend.  Yesterday I broke the record by walking from Teoumaville to my workplace did some work and in the afternoon I walked back the same distance - its about two hours from home and another two hours back.

Pheww... I thought people saw me on the road and thought I was crazy (without knowing my aim was 30,000 steps).  To my suprise, my steps did not beat my other two colleagues which boosted our group to 3rd position as of this morning!  

Oh my, we went walking at lunch time and made fun of ourselves but yet we are not giving up, we are maintaining our targets (to maintain those steps for this week) and we are going walking this afternoon again together.  Its great fun!!!

Happy walking ladies.

xxx

Vanuatu eagles - week 3

Congratulations to Vanuatu Eagles who is ranked the third (of 441) as of today (but this does not mean it stops there:))

Ladies!! we can all make it.  Please set your target each day or each week (as a team and personally)  and work towards it.  Encourage each other and walk together. Share healthy tips too.

The secret to making up your steps is start in the morning and then accumulate through out the day.

Stay safe and healthy ladies

Happy walking olgeta!!!

xxx

one team shares the corporate walking experience

Hi and thanks Katja for your continiuos words of encouragement. For your information our group is ranked 5 out of the 444 teams as of this morning, we want to maintain to be up in the top five groups...

For your info, I have a very good team, all team members are very smart walkers.  We have group walk twice a week, every monday and thursday and we try to reach 20,000 everyday, in fact most of the times last week we achieved and went over this goal.  I guess if we want to maintain the position (to be within the top 5 teams) we have to increase this goal to 30,000 this week, right ladies??!

Corporate challenge - Walktober

Five motivated and committed Wokabaot Jalens teams are taking it up and have started the Corporate Walking challenge yesterday. What great role models you are! 

Good Luck and keep us posted about your progress. 

Waes woman wokabaot blong laef!

Taking it some steps further

Several teams are now registering for the Corporate Walking Challenge 2011.

Great work - good luck ladies, you can do it!!

Thank you so much Katja for that email, I am deeply encouraged as I thought that by walking more than 10,000 steps a day I could still have so much portion on my plate. By reading this email, I will make sure that I will stick to a healthy diet as well. For the past 2 weeks I felt so much alive, more fresher and alert at work and more energetic during my netball game every saturday. I am so thankful to be part of this program....

another success story

Dear Katja,

Just an update on my last check-up at the Specialist NCD at VCH, after taking medication (3 tablets every morning)  for high blood pressure for two weeks, the reading came down from 197/180 to 140/80. no diabetic no cholesterol. I now find myself regaining the strength I lost for the past few weeks and the weight is going away so fast. I find that walking for half an hour is just my level so far. i do not eat salt anymore and cutting it from my house too. (my family have difficulty accepting it but I give them my example to convince them….hahaha) so they accept easily. I use herbs for condiment: parsil, coriander, green onion, basil etc. and I love it. My round face is becoming  not round anymore!!!!! I’ll do my next check-up on the 1^st of november. I’ll keep you posted with my health condition.

Thank youa again for convincing me to seek medical help, I sincerely appreciate it and it changed my life.

God bless.

xxx

update

The monitoring phase of the Wokabaot Jalens has terminated in July 2011 and data analysis is currently in the process. Participants are encouraged to keep up with the healthy lifestyle and regular exercises for long-term success.....One participant shares today:

"Walking has become a habit to me now. I really love walking and have maintained my weight since."

Vanuatu Daily Post

After 12 weeks with the Wokabaot Jalens Program, Letty W. Kaltonga talks to the leading lady Agnes David about her experience. 

I love walking and walking is part of my life. I walk to work every day and throughout the day as well but joining this program has boosted me up to walk that extra mile. Especially when I went through the first health screening test, my weight result was 79 which was marked as overweight in comparison with my normal weight used to be 65 and my height is 1.62m. My waist is 99 which is beyond the normal waist measurement which is 88, too much fat storage along my waist, the above results is very disturbing and has exceeded my normal body index. This is very serious I have to take some drastic measures in order to avoid the catastrophic situation I am heading for. The advice is my life is in danger if I don’t make any change. There are only two ways out that is to walk a lot or do more physical exercise and change my diet to healthy diet in order to lose weight. After the test results my aim is to make sure that I improve my health so I was concentrating and focussing on reducing my weight and changing my diet without realizing that I will hit the 1million steps challenge record. With the determination I have for improvements I have done so much work i.e. walking and eating healthy diet during the last 12 months and I lost 10kg.

Read the full story here