rosie mesterhazyKids need 60 minutes of physical activity a day to keep their heart and lungs healthy and maintain a healthy weight. Schools play a big role in encouraging active lifestyles for students of all ages, whether it’s walking and bicycling to school or being active at school and in the classroom. That’s why Fire Up Your Feet are making a difference in providing schools with resources, encouragement and incentives to create healthy habits that will last a lifetime.

Fire Up Your Feet helps students, families and school staff make small lifestyle changes that can yield big rewards in terms of overall health. Even better, more than $70,000 in awards offer schools the opportunity to pay it forward by encouraging even more healthy behaviors and activities. The Challenge kicks off TODAY in Metro Atlanta, California, Colorado, and Hawaii, and May 1-31 in the Baltimore area, New Hampshire, Oregon, Southwest Washington, Wisconsin, Washington, D.C. and Virginia. Sign up today!

Listen to this great success from one of last years award winning schools!

Making sure that these rewards and awards are accessible to all communities is a top priority, especially since lower-income communities are more likely to be affected obesity and chronic diseases. We want to be sure that all communities, but especially those communities facing the greatest barriers to health, have the opportunity to get up, get out and get moving with Fire Up Your Feet. We made two enhancements this Spring to help all schools. First, we added a a coordinator tracking option that enables PE teachers, parent leaders and community partners to track for students that might have limited internet access, or whose parents are unable to track for them. Best of all, the coordinator tracker gives classrooms and other groups of students the chance to compete for all of our upcoming 2014 Fire Up Your Feet Spring Activity Challenge awards.

If you have not yet registered to participate in the 2014 Spring Activity Challenge, just make sure to check the box indicating you are a coordinator on your online registration form. Second, we now have new Spanish online and paper tracking resources available to ensure that language is not a barrier to participating in Fire Up Your Feet.

Please don't hesitate to get in touch with us if your school is in a participating region and would like to share your success or want some additional support or ideas.  With so many opportunities and incentives to be active, there has never been a better time to make your activity count. Sign up and start tracking for the 2014 Spring Activity Challenge today!