Keeping Today’s Youth Active – How?

Keeping today’s youth in sports is and can be a challenging task for Families, Schools and those working with various sports groups and/or organizations. Although some schools are finding it difficult to encourage activity in youth, it is important to recognize the schools that are making effort, such as Ravenscroft, with 20 sports for students to pick from. However, there is no doubt that obesity is an ongoing issue around the World.

In various areas of the Globe we see obese children as well as adults who create and add additional stress on several areas of society.

With Canada and other Countries dealing with an on-going health crisis we hear that over half of Canadian Children and teens are not nearly as active as the older generation when they were young.

Why? Quite simply put is that there were no electronic tablets, cell phones or video games as they are controlled by today.

We see today’s youth walking and texting and not talking on the streets or when they simply grab a Big Mac at their local “hang-out”.

Royal Bank has created what they call the Learn to Play Project which provides grants to local communities and organizations in full support of building Physical Literacy for Canadian Kids and the Youth.

Grants varying from $1,000 to $10,000 are awarded to community groups that develop and implement actions plans in a manner of promoting physical activity.

It takes great pleasure to officially announce that Play Group Victoria was recently awarded a $25,000 leadership grant in October for work around physical literacy development in Greater Victoria.

The PLAY (Physical Literacy and You) Group is led by professionals and volunteers from the health, recreation, sport and education sectors who want to brainstorm and collaborate on ways to support physical literacy in Greater Victoria.

The complete aim for PLAY Group is to provide an avenue for any interested groups/individuals to work to promote, evaluate specific programs and implement any promising practice that can and will advance physical literacy in Greater Victoria.

All by utilizing the Sport for Life Values, which builds confidence and the needed motivation in today’s children and youth, which fails to add to physical activity.

Dr. Richard Stanwick, Past President of the Canadian Paediatric Society and Island Health’s current Chief Medical Health Officer recently stated the following article below.

“An international research study on fitness published last month in a leading journal of sports medicine placed Canadian children and youth smack in in the middle of 50 countries, faring far better than the US but not nearly as well most northern European countries.

The authors, who are Canadian, stressed the importance of the roles of social inequity and the opportunity to maintain a fitness trajectory during this age group as critical in avoiding future poor health and chronic disease. So, from this doctor’s perspective, this grant is exactly the right prescription for health and well-being in our region.”

Congratulations to the PLAY Group Victoria on being awarded the sum of $25,000 as its part of the Leadership Grant presented to them from RBC.

It’s interesting to note that Delta BC recently held it’s first (what is hoped many) Delta’s Physical Literacy Summit, which was the brain-storm of Carlene Lewell of the Delta Sport Council.

The key-note speaker was Drew Mitchell who is the Director of Physical Literacy for the Sport for Life Society.

He managed Sport Technical and Performance Services for viaSport BC and was the Manager of Science & Medicine programs for SportMedBC where he worked with over 50 different sports at the local, provincial and national level.

He is also a past member of the Canadian National Canoeing Team and the former Health & Lifestyle Coordinator at the Downtown Vancouver YMCA.

He has also been involved in sport and fitness for over 40 years as an Athlete, Coach, Administrator, Volunteer, Developer and hands-on Manager.

For more information please visit http://www.rbc.com/community-sustainability/commitment-to-kids/index.html?tab=learn-to-play-project

HOW ACTIVE ARE YOU??

Continued success!