Active
Farmers founder Ginny Stevens is on a mission to address rural and remote
farming community access issues through regular group fitness.
Having
grown up on a farm in Tasmania, Ginny has always been passionate about
agriculture and staying active.
Today,
she combines the two through Active Farmers, a program that offers farmers and
other community members the chance to improve their physical and mental health
and wellbeing.
Stepping
away from an eight-year career in agribusiness banking in 2018, Ginny has since
devoted her time to making sure that as many country towns in regional areas
throughout Australia have access to the program.
“The number one driving passion for me is just my love of rural communities and those that live in the communities,” Ginny said.
“Every community is different, every community has a different bunch of people and I think that they all matter and there’s nothing more satisfying to me than seeing a group like that come together and work on improving their health, have fun and naturally improve their health, mental health and build resilience in their communities.”
Ginny started Active Farmers in 2015 and has since expanded the program to more than 30 rural communities which she hopes to grow to 70 by June 2020.
“I’ve been extremely fortunate to find such a fantastic group of personal trainers to facilitate the service, so I take no credit for the success of the expansion,” Ginny said.
“It is a 100% reliant on those people every week running active farmers classes for their community.”
Preparations for the 2020 Active Farmers Games are well underway with the event set to take place in Temora, NSW on Saturday 14 March.
The Games will include two obstacle course events that caters for those looking to compete and those who just want to have fun.
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Temora based trainer Kristy Quigg said training had increased this year as people prepared for the competition.
“I run classes twice a week at Collector just to provide fitness there,” Kristy said.
“We’ve
been doing a little bit of extra training during our sessions.
“We’ve
done tyre lifts, picking up heavy weights, running and basically anything to
move your body, because it’s about having fun.
“We
do park runs as well, just to pick up extra skills there.”
