From Classroom to Treadmill: UiTM Students Drive Health Awareness Campaign

‘New Year, New Me!’ campaign was carried out for three weeks starting from 4 December 2023 until 18 December 2023. The purpose of this campaign is to promote an active lifestyle using simple exercise that can be done daily among students of UiTM Cawangan Melaka Kampus Bandaraya Melaka.

The campaign aims to foster a healthy lifestyle on campus through simple activities. It seeks to raise awareness about exercises beneficial to well-being while emphasizing the transformative impact of incorporating these routines into daily campus life. By encouraging easy, accessible activities, the initiative aims to instill lasting habits that contribute to a healthier lifestyle. The goal is to encourage Students at UiTM Melaka City Campus in practicing a healthy and active lifestyle.

There are 3 main activities throughout this campaign. The first activity; ‘Challenge Your Body’ was carried out on 6 December 2023 at PTAR level 12. 2 categories were contested, which are push-ups for men and lunges for women. Participants are required to perform the exercise as much as possible within 1 minute. The second activity, which is ‘Step by Step’ was held on 16 December 2023 where participants were challenged to use the stairs from the first floor to the 14th floor. The last activity which was a casual talk ‘The art of Healthy Lifestyle’ was held on the last day of the campaign which was 18 December 2023 where the aim of this talk is to explain to students how and ways to practice an active lifestyle in their daily lives. The closing ceremony and prize giving ceremony was also conducted after the talk session.

As a result of the campaign, students who organized this campaign have tracked the feedback from participants through an online survey, google forms questions and through face-to-face follow up sessions. Through these two methods, participants are welcomed to share their thoughts and opinions regarding the campaign. Before the campaign started, 35.3% of the 20 people who answered the survey said that they strongly agree with the need to exercise 20 minutes per day to stay active and this number increased to 47.6% after the campaign finished. In the face-to-face follow up session, most of the participants shared that they started to include push-ups in their daily routine and started to use stairs more at the campus.

New Year, New Me organizer has found that the participation of the campaign from UiTM Bandaraya Melaka Campus was at a satisfying level as so many students have contacted them sharing their interest in being part of the campaign. However, there were few obstacles that stopped many participants from joining the campaign activities such as activities held scheduled at the same time as classes. During activity days, there were few disruptions such as google form links not responding causing the registration process taking too long. At the final activity of the campaign which was ‘The Art of Healthy Lifestyle’ talk, participants showed a high level of responsiveness with numerous questions asked to the Fitness Coach who was invited to lead the talk. This shows that New Year, New Me members successfully delivered their message on active lifestyle among students and managed to attract students’ attention in being part of an active community.

This campaign was executed under umbrella of Social Campaign with Community (SoCCoM) 4.0 where it involved a semester 5 BBA (H) Marketing students from UiTM Kampus Bandaraya Melaka, as the campaign was to execute using the 10-steps of social marketing campaign.