SWAN QUARTER — Hyde County Health Department has partnered with local organizations to offer a Saturday workshop about better health through diet and exercise.

The workshop, called ‘Healing the Body: Diet, Exercise and Spirit’ will be held at Old Richmond Missionary Baptist Church fellowship hall in Swan Quarter from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Hyde Partners for Health Chronic Disease Task Force and Project DIRECT Legacy offers presentations and workshops in Hyde County for living healthy while having a chronic illness, said Archie Green, project director for Project DIRECT Legacy. DIRECT is an acronym for Diabetes Interventions Reaching and Educating Communities Together. The program, started in 2010 with a grant from the University of South Carolina, was originally intended for African-American men and their families, but now the program is open to everyone. It follows a concise coursework developed by Stanford University and covers a multitude of topics, Green said.

“We have to teach the program according to Stanford University’s coursework rules,” Green said. “We present the program the way it is supposed to be presented.”

Green said, this particular workshop is a joint meeting in which all residents of the county can come. The workshops are two-hour sessions, one day a week for six weeks.

“We want to get people to think about their health,” Green said. “If they like it, we try to set up a workshop in their area.”

Green said the free classes target people who live with chronic illnesses such as diabetes, high blood pressure and arthritis. The program also strives to help people with chronic diseases to get off of their medicines. Through diet, exercise and other valuable information learned in the program, individuals have a chance to talk about their personal experiences with diseases and set goals for improvement, Green said.

There is a walking club as well as a community gardening program in which fresh vegetables are grown for the entire community to enjoy, Green said. There are two gardens: one in Englehard and one in Swan Quarter. The gardens are not only a means of exercise for participants, but also a way to promote healthy eating.

Workshop leaders, who undergo a weeklong coursework, conduct the sessions, said Green. At the workshops, people are grouped according to sex.

“Some questions men will not ask in front of women, so that’s the main reason we do that,” Green said.

Green said the two groups come back together for a closing session in which they can ask questions together.

The program has grown over the years and has reached county residents in several different communities, Green said. Different workshops are conducted in different communities because the needs of the people in one community may not be the same in the next community, Green said.

Old Richmond Missionary Baptist Church is located at 18525 U.S. Hwy 264, Swan Quarter, NC 27885. For more information, call Archie Green at 252-926-9261 or Liz Mumm at 252-926-5289.