As part of the Healthy South Carolina Initiative, Eat Smart Move More York County recently hosted a School Trails workshop on February 20 as a strategy for increasing opportunities for students, faculty and the surrounding community to be more active in their daily lives on school grounds. Over 20 schools from throughout York County attended the interactive workshop that was led by Woody Keen of the trail consulting company, Trail Wisdom, LLC. Woody gave an informative presentation in the morning session on the types of trails that are appropriate for school sites and how to make them fun and interesting for both learning and active living. In the afternoon session, Woody led the group on a site visit to a local school where participants learned the basics on how to conduct a school site assessment and other considerations for school site trail planning. Schools who attended were invited to apply for design services that will be awarded based on certain criteria in the application. Once the committee has selected a school(s), the school(s) will be responsible to raise funds and coordinate the construction of their respective school trail. Some of the positive comments from the participant’s evaluations include:
- “Awesome- Can’t wait to start planning”
- “Very knowledgeable presenter, lots to think about- great contacts in the community”
- “I got some excellent ideas on how to make our existing project track into something more pleasing and fun for all kids”
- “This is a great topic and will be useful for many schools”
- “This was a completely new and unique experience. Absolutely worthwhile investment.”
- “I really appreciated that we got both the classroom and outdoor time. Being able to go out and see what is required and can be done was great.”
- “One of the best workshops I attended this year. Can’t wait to try and get some trails started.”
Eat Smart Move More York County was excited for such a wonderful opportunity to be able to host a School Fitness Trail Workshop. This group is looking forward to working with our local schools in increasing active community environments for our York County residents.