The Importance of Fitness in Housing

Posted on

Written by Emily Johnson, Housing Case Manager

The young people beginning their new lives at Archdale and St. Barnabas apartments have exemplified the meaning of “flexible” when it comes to their fitness rooms. Unfortunately, this has not been thanks to yoga classes or stretch bands, but due to dealing with broken equipment, closed fitness rooms, and having nowhere safe to wind down, work out, and let off steam.

The fitness rooms should be playing their part in YouthLink’s commitment to providing holistic services to the young people we serve. Though commonly referred to as “weight rooms,” these spaces are used for more than just working out. When the rooms are open and fully functional, youth can use the spaces to relax, practice using healthy outlets for emotional regulation, and stick to wellness goals they are working on with their primary care physicians—in short, these rooms are places to remove the weight of the world from residents’ shoulders.

Archdale apartments has recently been able to re-open its fitness room and—with the help of YouthLink’s Young Professionals Board—it has even gotten a bit of a face lift. Volunteers from the Young Professionals Board have been a big help in breathing new life into the Archdale fitness room. [Just look at some of the progress we’ve made with their help:]

With your ongoing support (through channels such as our Amazon Wish List), once the paint has dried we will be able to provide Archdale residents with weights, exercise balls, and new boxing gloves—as well as spaces of their own.

But we can’t stop when we’re only halfway to our goal! Setting our sights on the future, we hope to have St. Barnabas’s fitness room re-opened soon, as well. And—with continued donations and volunteers—provide the youth who live there with the same opportunities as other young people just starting out in their own first apartments.

Share this :