June saw an eager team of Catalystas “fight discrimination with perspiration” for the Burnett Foundation’s annual Sweat With Pride fundraiser.
With input from various staff members and some eager volunteers, a Catalyst workplace team was registered to sweat 21 minutes a day in support of the Burnett Foundation Aotearoa (formerly the NZ AIDS Foundation), Rainbow Youth, OutLine, and Tīwhanawhana. Why 21 minutes? That’s the minimum amount of activity we need for happy and healthy bodies and minds. It sounds easy, but currently, 50% of Kiwis aren’t meeting this goal.
A list of names of people from Catalyst with the amount they fundraised and the number of minutes they spent exercising.
The Sweaty Betties
Our team of Sweaty Betties supported each other throughout the month and kept motivated with daily photo challenges and weekly group events including:
- a dance party in the Catalyst HQ cafeteria
- a scavenger hunt
- yoga
- frisbee in Civic Square
- and finally, a waterfront walk followed by lunch at Rosie’s Cantina
Thanks to our amazing friends and workmates, and some dollar-matching support days from BNZ and Spark Health, we raised over $5,300 for projects that provide essential physical, mental and sexual health services for Rainbow* New Zealanders and sweated for a combined total of 16,500 minutes!
In fact, Team Catalyst worked so hard that we finished up #18 on the leaderboard of a hundred-plus workplaces registered with SWP23! This was a fantastic result for us, in a Top 20 made up of large nationwide organisations and international high-profile high-flyers.
In true creative Cata-style, Koha developer and leading Sweaty Betty, Aleisha Amohia used the combined photos from our daily photo challenge to create a rainbow visual summary of our efforts:
Supporting communities
By the end of June, Aotearoa’s nearly 450 Sweaty Betties had been active for nearly 1,900,000 minutes and raised over $600,000. It was a fantastic time, and a lot of fun, and we’re all very proud of the support Catalyst received.
Supporting our Rainbow community is a year-long effort at Catalyst, but we’re looking forward to jumping back into Sweat With Pride 2024. Our thanks to all our donors, friends, family, and fellow Catalystas who supported us this year!
* ‘Rainbow’ is a term that can be used to describe the many variations of sexual attraction and sex/gender identity, including intersex, transgender, genderqueer, asexual, takatāpui, fa’afafine, lesbian, bisexual and gay people that make up our community. We know that ‘Rainbow’ is not the preferred term for everybody.
Sweat With Pride: https://sweatwithpride.com(external link)
The Burnett Foundation: https://www.burnettfoundation.org.nz(external link) (contains R18 & graphic health content)
Rainbow Youth: http://ry.org.nz/(external link)
Outline: https://outline.org.nz/(external link)
Tīwhanawhana: http://www.tiwhanawhana.com/(external link)