Building Healthy Communities
As an afterschool initiative, Building Healthy Communities is a service learning program focused on combating the childhood obesity epidemic. Students and their families learn about the importance of healthy lifestyles, what it means to be healthy, their role in the community, how to be good citizens, how they can positively affect their communities.
To give students a well-rounded understanding of how health impacts their life, students attend sessions on:- Making healthy choices
- Healthy eating and recipes
- Rregular exercise
- Body image
- Effects of media on health
- Leadership and service
On National Days of Service and at individual school events, students sponsor health-based service learning projects to share the information they’ve learned with other students, their families and community members. In the past, projects have included creating cookbooks, conducting fitness challenges, sponsoring bi-monthly health fairs, collecting healthy foods to donate to local food pantries and soup kitchens (including apples they picked at a local orchard), and developing a nutrition board game.
