Sea to Sky Moves, in partnership with Whistler Sport Legacies, is putting a call out to the community to get active and help the Sea to Sky area be recognized as Canada’s most active community through the country wide ParticipACTION challenge.
“So, this is a big event that has been going on for at least a few years across Canada and what happens is ParticipACTION Canada puts out the challenge to any communities and the goal of it is just to get everybody up and moving,” said Meredith Gardner, project mentor for Sea to Sky Moves.
“The other thing we really want to do is get everybody posting really positive images of themselves out moving as much as possible and to inspire people right now when a lot of people have been feeling trapped inside.”
The ParticipACTION Challenge is open to anyone to join and tracks the minutes of activity that everyone from each community logs for the entire month of June. At the end of the month, whichever community has the most minutes logged per capita will win $100,000 to go towards physical literacy initiatives.
To get involved, just download the ParticipACTION app, put in your postal code and begin logging all of your minutes of physical activity each day. Everything counts whether it is an intense workout, just walking to the store, or anything in between. The app can also connect to your Fitbit to track your minutes automatically.
Organizations that are planning to participate can also log the minutes from their workplace all at once online at participaction.com.
In addition to potentially helping the Sea to Sky community win the national contest, there are weekly prizes for participants who share photos or videos of them getting active on social media with the hashtag #s2smoves.
“I think the biggest thing is this is meant to run across social media so it will really be that if somebody in the community sees this and they join in, they just need to post it on Instagram and Facebook and just encourage their friends,” said Gardner.
“And our plan is, we're hoping that it's kind of contagious or airborne and it goes out and people find out about it, and they log in and participate and our numbers will climb.”
From the outside, Whistler, and the entire Sea to Sky corridor, seems like the perfect community for a challenge like this based on the overall activity level of the people who live here. However, according to Gardner there is actually a high level of inactivity here as well.
“We have this extraordinary playground, and we have all these extreme athletes, and we do have a lot of very active people, but there is a shocking number of people that are inactive and especially youths right now,” she said.
“But because we have this really competitive sector of our community, I'm hoping those people will get excited about the idea of winning the title, the most active community in Canada. And then, for the people who are more socially motivated, we hope that they are going to be challenging their friends and their families and making it a fun social challenge.”
Organizations that are currently planning to be involved once the challenge starts June 1 include Whistler Gymnastics, the Whistler Mountain Ski Club, Meadow Park Sports Centre, Brennan Park Recreation Centre in Squamish and the Pemberton Community Centre.
