Four local entities have teamed up with one goal in mind: Teach both young and old how to live and maintain a healthy life.
Active Living La Crescent has developed partnerships with the Boys & Girls Club of Greater La Crosse, the La Crescent-Hokah School District and La Crescent-Hokah Community Education to form the Lifelong Fitness Coalition. The group’s purpose is to work collaboratively with community organizations to develop and promote fitness and healthy living in the La Crescent area.
“We’re looking to expose youth and our community members to lifelong fitness skills to improve lifelong health,” said Sue Howe, program coordinator for Active Living La Crescent.
The coalition targets people from age 8 to 80. Howe thinks that if kids can get excited about a new activity they experienced in school, thus the partnership with La Crescent-Hokah, that enthusiasm will transfer to their parents or others around them.
She said these skills are critical in a time when obesity and diabetes rates in Minnesota are climbing. In an obesity report from two public health groups, it was found that one in four Minnesotans in considered obese. Additionally, one-third of all adults in the state has diabetes or is pre-diabetic.
“That’s a preventable disease through exercise and diet,” Howe said. “I believe our culture and society has gotten away from exercise. We’ve gotten away from finding that that is important.”
The idea for such a partnership was planted in fall 2010 when Active Living started working with La Crescent Middle School in assessing its physical education curriculum. The thought then was to find ways to incorporate fitness skills into the class.
Rather than learning to shoot a free throw, the need was there, Howe said, to teach students how to snowshoe, cross-country ski or run a 5k, activities more useful later in life. She met with phy-ed and health staff, who agreed they’d like to provide those activities, but equipment costs – and related maintenance – were a hurdle.
However, several other area schools were already incorporating the activities into their curriculum and had the equipment, so Howe asked where the money came from.
She was told to partner with a local 5k race and tap into its proceeds, so she contacted Peter and Cheryl Franta, organizers of the Run to the Edge Scenic 5k in La Crescent. She explained the coalition’s mission, and ultimately, secured a renewable grant from the race that’ll nearly double the school’s yearly K-12 physical education department budget. That contribution, Howe said, benefits students at all grade levels.
“You expose a kid to snowshoeing and they come home excited to their family,” she said. “To me, that’s powerful, and that’s something kids are going to take.”
In addition, the school recently was awarded a Statewide Health Improvement Program grant, but because of the nature of the grant, other community entities needed to benefit as well, which is where the boys and girls club and community education fit in.
That money was used to purchase 32 pairs of snowshoes that will be used by school district students during the day, Boys & Girls Club participants after school, and the general public through community education on weekends.
La Crescent Middle School began working with Active Living a couple years ago, both in its curriculum and through a fitness challenge students participated in. Middle School Principal Ben Barton said being healthy is a prerequisite to learning.
“If our students are healthy, then we feel like we’re setting the stage for learning to take place,” he said. “That’s one thing that’s important for us for the here and now, but at the same time, it fits with our long-term philosophy that we’re here to prepare our students for the world outside the walls of this school.
“It fits perfectly with lifelong fitness, making good choices and creating some good habits.”
The school has found ways to get its students active during the winter, which includes taking them on snowshoe hikes during their advisory and phy-ed periods.
“We’re trying to approach this through multiple facets,” Barton said. “We want to prepare and equip students for things they can do forever.”
Along with changes in curriculum, the fitness challenge and a February speaker series, Barton hopes to culminate the efforts with a yearly 5k race for middle school students.
He called the coalition “an umbrella” covering the whole community, but said the school is a large part of that community because it touches the lives of youth and their parents. He said it’s nice to have other partners involved who care about the health of the community and can help the school achieve its goals.
“We were able to get the snowshoes, and that was purely in partnership with community ed.,” Barton said. “The purpose of that (grant) was for community purposes, so community education has been gracious enough to partner with us.”
Eventually, the coalition would like to include cross-country skis, in-line skates and bicycles in its arsenal of equipment. That might involve bringing other groups like The Bike Shoppe into the fold, she said, which could act as the coalition’s rental agency during the summer.
Sustainability will play a large part in the coalition’s success, as will that hopeful embrace of the fitness activities it’s trying share. Howe believes the combined effort of the partners involved is a good start.
“We needed to find a group that will help guide this process, tap into funding sources and be able to plug that funding into some well thought out systematic change that can impact people,” she said. “But we can’t do it alone.”
No comments:
Post a Comment