Why not join these young people in Scotland and Northern Ireland and take a SmallSteps4Life challenge this autumn?
Young people in Scotland and Northern Ireland are taking their SmallSteps4Life!
6 Aug 2010
Through The Prince’s Trust’s xl clubs, six schools in Scotland and five schools in Northern Ireland are taking part in a pilot which will see some of the hardest to reach young people taking on SmallSteps4Life challenges in getting active, eating well and feeling good.
Smallsteps4life is leading the healthy and active lifestyles strand of Get Set + and has been recognised as an outstanding project, through the Inspire programme. SmallSteps4Life supports Change 4Life and will help deliver the Games’ lasting legacy beyond 2012.
An important aspect of SmallSteps4Life is targeted work, through select non-Government organisations, with vulnerable young people who are at risk of exclusion or are outside of mainstream education. This work will purposely explore how SmallSteps4Life can work with these particular groups of young people. The organisations the Food Standards Agency is partnering with include – The Prince’s Trust, Fairbridge West, Continyou and The National Organisation for Pupil Referral Units in England.
The Prince’s Trust works with the hardest to reach young people through its xl clubs that are based in schools, often in areas of deprivation, non mainstream educational settings (Pupil Referral Units and Young Offender Institutes), schools achieving poor GCSE results and OFSTED reports, and schools identified by government as facing high levels of challenging behaviour.
xl clubs re-engage 14-16 year olds at risk of truancy, exclusion or underachievement and enable young people to discover their own potential in an informal environment that encourages them to take responsibility for their own learning and development.
Within six schools in Scotland, and five schools in Northern Ireland, young people will access and use the materials provided through SmallSteps4Life website will actively engage and challenge themselves to eat well, get active and feel good, in the new term.
For example in Hazelwood xl club in Belfast young people have been looking at ways to improve the diet of the club members. Centred around a discussion on what a healthier diet may look like took place, all of the young people were asked to bring in any wrappers from the snacks that they had eaten. The group then spent time looking at what was used to make the snack including the fat, sugars and salt content. As their challenge, they decided they would try changing their snack choice for the next week.
One club member said that she was really surprised as to what her snack contained as she thought that she was eating a ‘so called healthy snack’.
So if you haven’t registered for SmallSteps4Life yet, what are you waiting for?
