Rotary's Healthy Heroes is a 9-week programme that will help you improve both your own and our nation’s health. The best way to build new habits is together -- in a group, like a school or family. In a group, with agreed goals, it's easier to make a start, easier to keep going, and easier to help each other with daily, weekly and monthly reminders. And... easier to have fun! It's amazing how quickly individual well-being energizes the whole group. For Healthy Heroes to work, we need there to be a strong three-way partnership between Rotary, school and family. Rotary: helps to launch and establish the programme in schools and it awards Healthy Heroes status to those who complete it.

A Rotary Club that adopts one or more schools in its area is called the Sponsoring Club. The school: offers the programme to their families, registers each child, records children's progress in meeting the five challenges and salutes good performance from time to time.

The family: follows the Healthy Heroes programme day by day and makes sure their children achieve their goals.The goal of the 9-week Healthy Heroes programme is to build 5 habits for life: regular physical activity, healthy eating, adequate sleep, a lively mind and concern for others.

The programme has five aspects: five fruit and vegetables a day, 8-10 hours sleep, half an hour of activity, helping-out with five things, and a mental challenge that could be reading a book or playing guitar.

Mrs Clearwater says the programme is well pegged to the new curriculum and helps students “without nagging” to participate, relate to others, and take responsibility for their actions. Students are more driven to take up the challenge when it’s not imposed on them, she says. “You know what it’s like when you tell kids to do something. This is more like a club they have joined, and it’s great for an apple and orange to be cool

Link directly to the Healthy Heroes Home Page from here healthyheroes

copyright © Rotary Club of Runaway Bay Inc. 2011