A Whole Community’s Success Story
StepUp4Kids was an innovative project to get every child at Our
Lady of Grace School loving and engaging with fitness. The idea,
conceived by mums Antonette Fazzari and Lynley Papineau in partnership
with Catherine Kolomyjec from Soul Gestures Inc, was to get every
student in the school fit in the lead up to last year's City to Surf for
Activ Foundation event.
Every student walked around the school
oval during Friday lunchtime, with the aim of achieving the distance of a
half marathon. Parents came down each week as well as different members
of the local community to inspire the students to reach their goal.
The
2010 City to Surf for Activ was an extraordinary day as a sea of canary
yellow t-shirts descended upon the event and StepUp4Kids cheered every
one of the 236 parents and children over the line. The excitement was
topped off by winning the Clear Solar School Challenge, winning OLG a
massive trophy and $25 000 worth of solar panels!
What simply
started with a couple of parents jogging has ended up with a way to
excite a whole community about fitness at a time when childhood obesity
is such a big issue. We are very proud to be involved with the City to
Surf for Activ as they take this model to another level through their Go
the Distance program.
If you would like to learn more about
StepUp4Kids or would like advice on how to implement a similar project
in your own school, please visit
www.stepup4kids.com.au.