Buggy boot camps and workouts while you sit down - Sunderland's Active Families North East brings fitness to you

Active Families North East, which picked up a trophy at the Sunderland Echo Business Excellence Awards last month, has celebrated a string of successes.

It has taken on more staff, reached its 5th birthday and been invited to spread its message at national events.

Active Families has already helped more than 8,000 people including from the Wearside area by bringing fitness and social activities to their doorstep, especially since Covid-19 spread across the world.

One of its biggest successes is its Well Bean Machine which is a health and activity van that goes out on to the streets, gets people active and also serves refreshments. And once you have shaped up, you can socialise with others.

It also runs buggy boot camps for children and seated exercise classes and the director of the not-for-profit business, Kelly Brougham, said: “We could never have imagined where we’d get to when we first started. At the beginning it was myself and our other two Directors Amy and Ashleigh and we had one simple goal, to help everyone get more active.

“That goal has never changed but what has changed dramatically is the number of people we can now reach out to and help engage in healthy activities through our range of innovative projects.”

Helping people from newborns to 99 years old

The aim is to ‘help every age to make healthy choices and get active wherever possible. But of course our work doesn’t just stop at fitness. Eating healthy and socialising are also core parts of what we do, which is why we offer healthy meal packs for children, craft and chat activities, coffee mornings, regular health newsletters and more.”

The company, which has expanded to a staff of 14 from 11, won the Business in the Community category at the Echo Business Awards plus the Partnership category in the Voluntary & Community Action Sunderland Open Arms (VCAS) Awards.

Kelly added: “We could never have imagined that we’d be shortlisted, never mind win. It’s an honour to be amongst so many fantastic organisations and just to see our name sitting alongside theirs was already such an honour for us.”

Active Families activities can be found at https://activefamiliesne.co.uk