Glen Cove Boys & Girls Club Triple Play Program Promotes Healthy Lifeskills to Members
Glen Cove Boys & Girls Club Triple Play program encourages daily physical activity, nutritional well-being and positive and productive social interaction.
- (1888PressRelease) May 15, 2013 - Sponsored by the WellPoint Foundation and The Coca-Coca Company, Glen Cove Boys & Girls Club Triple Play initiative is a healthy lifestyle program encouraging Club members to participate in daily physical activity, take charge of their own nutritional well-being and engage in productive social interaction to forge positive relationships with friends and staff. The goal of the program is to empower Club members by providing them with the necessary tools to make wholesome, practical and well-balanced choices.
According to the Center for Disease Control, 16 percent of children and teens - nearly nine million young people - are considered overweight. With childhood obesity in the United States at epidemic levels, the physical and psychological ramifications on a child can be daunting, affecting their overall health and self-esteem. To offset these frightening statistics, the implementation of the Triple Play initiative is a crucial addition to the Club's programs and an essential effort to help accomplish its mission to inspire and enable all young people to realize their full potential as productive and responsible citizens. The program is being overseen by the Club's Director of Operations, Franca Trunzo, Youth Program Director, Sara Laskow, Youth Sports & Fitness Coordinator, John Andree, and Education Coordinator Allison Kaiser.
The staff has divided the Triple Play program into three components, with each staff member overseeing a specific segment of the plan to ensure success of the initiative. Segment one focuses on fitness and exercise. The purpose of this segment is to not only get the kids involved in exercise but to increase the amount of time Club members spend daily on physical activity. The goal is to encourage members to dedicate at least one hour a day to physical fitness through an assortment of daily challenges including warm up, stretching, jogging, bone strengthening exercises as well as a variety of organized indoor and outdoor sports and activities.
Segment two of the program integrates nutrition into the Triple Play experience. Healthy Habits is an ongoing part of this curriculum providing weekly lessons designed to help members gain knowledge about nutrition, learn how to make better food choices, understand appropriate portion sizes, and how to create fun and healthy meals. The Club has partnered with Long Island Cares, a nonprofit food bank, to provide members with healthy snacks like apples, oranges and bananas in an effort to cultivate their taste for fruit. Taking the program one step further, dietitian students from Long Island University, a local area college, are volunteering their time to teach kids a Healthy Lifeskills Cooking Up Energy course incorporating healthy eating habits through hands on cooking classes. Meals prepared meet the USDA guidelines and members follow kid favorite recipes with a healthier twist. According to research done by the University of Alberta, Canada, "the best way to get your child to eat healthier foods -- and actually enjoy them -- is to have them help with meal preparation." The report also found that "kids who did meal prep and cooking were more confident about the importance of making healthier food choices."
Segment three of program targets the mental wellness of members by helping develop strong social skills through a variety of well-rounded structured and spontaneous activities. Kids get to play with their friends, challenge each other and compete for prizes. In a society where children playing video games or spending time alone on a computer is a very much a reality, it is even more important to get kids involved in an interactive and social setting where they can take part in fun activities with their friends. "We are noticing that the more involved Club members are in this part of the program, the more responsive they are to playing games with their friends including sports. Whether it is ping pong in the games room or soccer in the gymnasium, the addition of the physical activity is also leading them to make better food choices," observed Franca Trunzo, Director of Operations.
There are currently 127 members enrolled in the Triple Play program. To learn more about this initiative, contact Youth Program Coordinator, Sara Laskow at slaskow ( @ ) glencovebgc dot org
About Glen Cove Boys & Girls Club
Glen Cove Boys & Girls Club at Lincoln House has been serving the community since 1903 by providing a safe and caring environment that will inspire and enable all young people to realize their full potential as productive and responsible citizens. The Club serves more than 700 youths, ages 6 to 18, in the Glen Cove community with a variety of after school programs in education, sports and recreation, dance, technology and art, all designed to enrich and enhance learning and build self-esteem. To learn more about Glen Cove Boys & Girls Club and how you can help support the Club, its mission and service to the youth of the Glen Cove community, please call Melissa Rhodes, Executive Director at 516-671-8030 or visit www.glencovebgc.org.
About the WellPoint Foundation
The WellPoint Foundation is a private, non-profit organization wholly funded by WellPoint, Inc. Through charitable contributions and programs, the Foundation promotes WellPoint's inherent commitment to enhance the health and well-being of individuals and families in communities that WellPoint serves.
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