Evansville’s Healthy Communities Partnership Hosts Training at Dream Center

Evansville’s Healthy Communities Partnership (HCP) has partnered with Playworks in an effort to train adults who work in after school camps. Many coordinators showed up to attend the three day training to come up with methods to keep children active during recess activities. The training also serves to solve conflicts between activities and will continue on October 25th and 26th.

Robin Deem, a Marketing and Social Media/Wellness Coordinator for ECHO Community Healthcare says, “It teaches kids to cooperate and not only does it teach them to cooperate but it’s in a physical capacity to where they can take it to things they have learned while they are playing. It goes further out into the classroom and even in life skills when they are having fun, teaching them social skills as well as follow rules and have fun at the same time.”

Playworks has created a recess and play program that is used in more than 900 schools throughout the U.S. Research conducted by Stanford University and Mathematica Policy Research reports that in the Playworks schools examined, bullying decreased, children felt safer, there was more vigorous physical activity, and teachers gained eight minutes of quality classroom time each day.

HCP’s primary goal is to reduce childhood obesity by 20 percent by the year 2020.