Just read an interesting article on a non-profit organization called "Freiker" that encourages kids to walk or bike to school in return for the chance to win small prizes at the end of the year. While the material incentive system may or may not be the right one to underpin a program like this, there is no questioning the rationale behind getting kids to exercise more.
As stated in the article, 88 percent of students who lived within a mile of their grade schools got there by walking or biking in 1969. Today, the number has fallen to less than 16 percent. The rest now get dropped off, adding to carbon emissions, childhood obesity, and the plain-old bad habit of equating travel with a car.
Freiker aims to change this by instituting an accounting system for kids to record the number of trips they have biked or walked to school and competing with other kids at their schools for prizes based on the most trips during a school year. As of today, their website listed 130,000+ trips already since the non-profit started up 3 years ago. Let's hope the message gets out, and we can get more and more kids to use their own power to get to school. Carbon and physical fitness are definite upsides, but for me personally? Raising a generation of children who see that there are more options than just a car and who appreciate exercise.. this is the real payoff to me.
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