By Jade Harris, ukactive Programme Manager, ukactive Kids
ukactive is delighted to bring you news of a fantastic opportunity for leisure operators in our membership to join an exciting new nationwide campaign to get more children and families active.
Travel to Tokyo is based on the highly successful 2016 Road to Rio campaign, which challenged young people to virtually travel the distance to Rio in teams using their choice of physical activity. The Road to Rio programme was a schools-based challenge for students of all ages, which saw more than 1 million activities recorded on the digital platform, covering over 100 million km.
With funding from Sport England’s Families Fund, the Travel to Tokyo challenge was piloted in Merseyside from October 2018 to January 2019. The free challenge started in schools, with class teams, and children aged 5 to 11 being empowered to log their activity together with their families who were incentivised by team-specific targets.
Teams could earn prizes including athlete visits, local activities and take-home active equipment all of which were designed to help families build and sustain active habits. The challenge was supported by leisure facilities and National Governing Bodies for sport, which provided family activities in local schools and free passes for families to visit leisure centres.
Across the 17-week pilot in Merseyside, 5,906 children were engaged and 10,663 individual physical activity sessions were logged across the winter term, of which 41.4% of sessions were with family members.
A call for leisure operators
Following the success of the Merseyside pilot, we will continue our work with Team GB and ParalympicsGB, supporting families to Travel to Tokyo in the run up to Tokyo 2020 and beyond. We are looking for leisure facility operators who are interested in being a part of the nationwide challenge aiming to get even more families active through participation at leisure centres.
Operators involved will be provided with a range of branded digital resources, training, t-shirts, membership of a support network of operators across the country and even have an opportunity for Team GB and ParalympicsGB athletes to visit their leisure facilities.
To be involved in this high-profile campaign email: kids@ukactive.org.uk to register your interest and receive access to some brilliant resources.
More People More Active More Often
