The Physical Literacy for Communities Project Gains Momentum Country-Wide
The Physical Literacy for Communities (PL4C) initiative has mobilized all over the country, with numerous working tables being created to collaboratively establish a culture of healthy living and physical activity. And now that Sport for Life has teamed up with the Public Health Agency of Canada, the initiative is even better positioned to help create collaborative partnerships at the local level between the health, recreation, education, sport and media sectors.
This will enable communities to broaden the physical activity opportunities available to the population. In past iterations of the PL4C program, communities came together to create a program for newcomers, introduced a hospital program to help post-operative patients regain their mobility, and provided shoes for Indigenous students that needed them.
The Objective
The objective of PL4C in partnership with the Public Health Agency of Canada is to support the development of physical literacy in approximately 150,000 children and youth between the ages of 2 to 18 in select communities in B.C., Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, Nunavut and Atlantic Canada. This 36-month project aims to:
- increase community partnerships and multi-sectoral collaboration.
- increase understanding of physical literacy.
- increase the community’s capacity to support physical literacy activities
- improve physical literacy among the targeted population
- increase physical activity
- conduct physical literacy observations and help provide real-time feedback for schools and community programs aiming to develop the physical literacy of their children and youth.
- complete 50,000+Physical Literacy forYouth observations through the training of 50+ trained observers.
Once the community partner table has been created, the next step is capacity-building followed by physical literacy assessments. The capacity-building element consists of mobilizing eLearning, webinars, conferences and resources to educators, teachers and coaches. The assessments will provide real time feedback to community and school programs in select communities, with the results being compiled into a Pan Canadian physical literacy database. The data will be collected and evaluated to measure the development of physical literacy in young participants.