Children need to move more, but how do you make that fun and easy? In Peize, Peize in Beweging will try this together with the primary schools with The Daily Mile. An initiative to allow children to walk or run a mile, i.e. 1.6 kilometers, every day.
In Peize, The Daily Mile is a unique, fixed route that partly runs through the forest. The walking route is marked so that people know where to go. Anyone can use the path. The route starts at the schools and runs along the fields of football club Peize.
Peize in Beweging has developed the routes together with the two primary schools. “There is also a teaching program, in which the students can do assignments and games with the teachers. Such as conducting circle discussions while walking. We hope that in this way the schools will pick up the route and therefore move more,” says Laurens Bloem of Peize in Motion.
With this initiative, Bloem hopes that he will get more people on their feet. “Now we have an exercise park and this route. I hope that this will move even more people from the municipality.”
Erben Wennemars is ambassador of The Daily Mile and opened the new route. “The Daily Mile is an accessible initiative. A mile is a distance that anyone can walk or run. The mile can also be bridged for children who have a movement delay. It doesn’t matter how, as long as you move.”
Wennemars believes it is important that children are taught the importance of healthy living at school. “Someone once told me: obesity is a normal consequence of an abnormal environment in which we live. And that is why we have to teach the youth how to eat well and exercise. Health should be part of school.”
And besides health, exercise also has other positive effects on students, says Wennemars. “If you move, you are fresher in your head afterwards. And teachers are already so busy and then you also have such a busy class. Then send them outside to get rid of the energy. Then they can think properly again and they perform better in school.”