Routes to roots

At the heart of everything we do is fostering better integration and reducing isolation for culturally-diverse communities across the city of Exeter and beyond.

From our days during the pandemic delivering much-needed food parcels to South Asian and other culturally-diverse groups in our communities, our volunteer drivers became acutely aware of how many individuals felt socially isolated and inactive.

During these times, we worked with volunteers from several culturally-diverse communities – such as the Devon Bengali Association and the Exeter Hindu Cultural Centre – to arrange socially-distanced walks, giving many residents their only human contact and physical activity for months.

And those walks were just the beginning.

Fast-forward to today and many of our cultural events also include an element of physical activity within them.

With support from Live and Move, the Sport England Place Partnership in Exeter and Cranbrook, we have been able to run other activities, including zumba, women’s only yoga, badminton, volleyball and cricket.

Activities like these are very attractive to those from South Asian communities particularly.

Word-of-mouth spreads during Friday prayers at the Mosque and via our drop-in service, which supports residents with completing forms and accessing mainstream services, among other things.

And this approach is working.

The latest Live and Move local active lives survey data shows that levels of inactivity amongst culturally-diverse communities in Exeter have now almost decreased to pre-Covid levels.

Rates of inactivity

The success of this programme has enabled us to successfully apply for three years of funding from The National Lottery Community Fund to run our Better Connections project, enabling us to further support groups and individuals from South Asian and other communities.

With this funding, we are able to do so much more!

Our South Indian communities run an annual sports day, as does our Filipino community, plus the Devon Bengali Association put together a badminton tournament and a cricket tournament.

All these physical activities have become focal to our residents – whether it’s fun games for children or a more competitive sports match, the aim is to ensure that everybody has fun and is a little bit active.

What’s vital and the reason it works is that we listen to our residents from a variety of ethnicities –  we learn what is important to them and what they were missing at the time and we try and plug the gap.

We’ve learned so much by engaging with different communities in this way.

We know that not all South Asian communities are the same. Each has their own cultural identity and it’s important that any organisation understands and appreciates these.

Culture, religion and food are important to many of the people that we work with. We focus events on these elements and slot physical activity in as appropriate.

Word-of-mouth is by far the most effective communication method.

Friday prayers at the mosque or our drop-in services and the women’s-only yoga sessions, all proved to be helpful ways of communication.

Sustainability comes about because of communities taking a certain amount of ownership over an activity. For instance, the yoga group quickly became ‘their’ yoga group, and as a result, participants have ensured its sustainability.

I’m proud that, through our activities, we are improving health and wellbeing, building cross-cultural understanding and strengthening community relationships in Exeter and across Devon.

I hope other places across England feel they can do the same.