General News
7 June, 2022
Cobden will you join the challenge?
MORE than 40 Cobden students, residents, employees and sports players are participating in the Push Up Challenge.
MORE than 40 Cobden students, residents, employees and sports players are participating in the Push Up Challenge.
The challenge is a national mental health, suicide awareness and fitness initiative.
The event began on June 1 and runs to the June 24.
As of the June 4 nearly $200 has been raised by the Cobden community alone, with a goal to reach $1000 by the end of the challenge.
The challenge involves completing 3139 push ups in the month of June.
This is one push up for every suicide in Australia in 2021.
Donations go towards your choice of either Lifeline, Movember or the Push For Better foundation.
Nationally as of June 4, The Push Up Challenge has collectively raised $4.5million dollars to go towards these three foundations.
Australia wide there are over 100,000 people registered, and locals can still sign up by searching ‘push up challenge’ and registering on the Push Up Challenge website.
Interested residents can join a team by searching Cobden Community or you can create a team and join the community.
So far there are seven teams signed up with 40 participants, according to Cobden’s Willoughby Perriss who is championingthe initiative.
“Hopefully we can continue to grow this number,” he said.
“I’m passionate about this cause, because our community has been hit hard by suicides recently and we need to raise awareness”.
Willoughby said each day there is a different target number of push ups, the lowest being 70 and the highest 223.
“All of these numbers relate to a statistic, rate or percentage connected to mental health and wellbeing,” he said.
“There is no pressure to do all 3139 push ups. Just do as many as you can manage or if you can’t do push ups you can choose to do squats or an alternative exercise.”
Some of the community teams and events running to support the initiative are Belinda Savage’s team – BJ’s Bootcamp who are smashing through their daily targets.
Cobden Technical School has two teams who are also in the process of organising a barbecue fundraiser.
Thommo’s Hotel is running ‘Push Ups at The Pub’ on June 19 where everyone is encouraged to go along to the pub on the day and collectively do 3139 push ups.
“We encourage everyone, even those not in a team to come down to the pub and do at least one push up to help us get closer to our goal,” Belinda Davies said.
Other teams also participating are ‘The Perriss Crew’ a family group of 6, team ‘Walshy’, ‘Team Pub’ and ‘Cobden Squash Club’ so far with hopefully more teams coming on board.
To sign up or donate go to www.thepushupchallenge.com.au.
There are also donation tins at Ritchie’s IGA and Thommos Hotel along with more information. To find out more go to the Cobden community Facebook page at facebook.com/cobden3266/.