Teaching children to play
Heart and Stroke Foundation grant helps YMCA to build healthier kids
Brian Baker (Town Crier - February 2009)
Play with kids and you get them active for a day. Teach the community leaders proper physical fitness and you get kids active for a lifetime.
That’s the philosophy the YMCA and the Heart and Stroke Foundation are following as they look to help 13 low-income neighbourhoods in Toronto meet the physical activity needs in youth age 5–12.
The YMCA of Greater Toronto applied for a $94,000 grant from the Heart and Stroke foundation to augment programs they already have in place, including Youth Fit For Life, part of Get Active Toronto.
For Cat Girotti, The YMCA’s manager of Get Active Toronto, reaching out to those who can’t afford organized sports was most important, and training those running children’s programs was the best starting point.
“I think the main priority is that in many of the after-school environments there is no physical activity program because staff don’t have training,” she says. “In many priority neighbourhoods there aren’t the funds to support that kind of training or ongoing program.
“Once we provide training to the staff and support them and follow them up, this can be delivered, ongoing and sustainable — it’s not going to continue to cost any money.”
Most who run the camps and programs in priority neighbourhoods are tenants in Toronto Community Housing.
For Anne McGregor, children and youth manager from Toronto Community Housing, the training provides more opportunities for kids and staff.
“This is just another dimension to the program,” she says. “Some of our staff don’t have this knowledge, so it’s just another aspect for them, something more that they can do in the program with the children.
“(Staff) are always happy, because the more training they get the more they can put down on their resumes that they have this.”
But McGregor adds the more options parents and children have the better, because they aren’t relying on solely on the housing corporation for play time.
“We’re not the be all and end all,” she says. “There are many organizations out there who run excellent children’s and youth programs out there and we want to ensure our tenants have access to the resources.”
In total 28 sites under Toronto’s two school boards, Toronto Community Housing and Not Your Average Daycare have been chosen by the YMCA to receive the training.
One of main tenets for Youth Fit for Life is building self-esteem, with most recreation focusing on sport or skill development, says Girotti.
It’s tough to build confidence in kids. But take out the competition and inject fun, and they will warm up.
“A lot of kids are not physically active because they think they aren’t good enough. A lot of our recreation is focused on sport development, specific skill development, and not overall enjoyment of physical activity,” she says. “So if we can teach kids to enjoy recreation, to enjoy being physically active, then they begin to believe that they’re capable of doing it.”
As for the Heart and Stroke Foundation their concern lies within the alarming numbers that show 28 percent of children are obese, and also getting health awareness into communities.
“In order for kids to be more physically active, we need to give them more access to recreation centres. And when I say access, I mean we need to make it affordable, close enough to their homes to get to, we need to be able to open those doors so they can access such physical activities,” says Vonnie Barron, the foundation’s youth specialist.
The YMCA’s offer to train people already in the communities was what attracted the foundation.
“It’s the sustainability around giving people around those centres the resources and the skills to take that program and run with it,” Barron says. “So, we in fact, aren’t funding the program. What we’re doing is funding the supports that are being put in place to allow those individual after-school centres to take this activity program and get more kids involved.”
Still, the YMCA says they don’t focus entirely on obesity.
“We don’t want to just target kids who are obese,” says Girotti. “Youth Fit For Life is not for kids who are obese, this is a prevention."