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Policy Practice Research

Safety & Outdoor Play

Thank you to Roula Zougheibe, PhD Candidate at Curtin University, Australia, for providing this post. Active children and neighbourhood safety Children build up their recommended daily physical activity through organised sport, playing, walking, cycling and/or scootering to local destinations in their community. Our study “Is there a correlation between children’s outdoor active mobility behaviour and neighbourhood safety?...

29 September, 2021

In 2020 the Lawson Foundation published a report and position on increasing outdoor play in early learning child care environments in the context of COVID-19. With input from OPC Leadership Group member Frank Welsh, the Lawson Foundation recently revisited the guidelines and published an update through First Policy Response.   Read the updated report, 'Outdoor early learning helps kids....

14 July, 2021

Thank you to Dr. Negin Riazi, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Health Sciences at Brock University, for providing this post. Children’s independent mobility refers to a child’s freedom to travel and play in their neighbourhood without the supervision of adults. However, there has been a steep generational decline in children’s independent mobility which is quite...

31 March, 2021

On Friday, March 12, 2021, Minister McKenna and Parliamentary Secretary Fillmore announced they are moving forward with the National Active Transportation Strategy and the creation of a $400M Active Transportation Infrastructure Fund. Vélo Canada Bikes has been actively involved in calling for this Active Transportation Strategy and working with the government and stakeholders in moving this...

12 March, 2021

The Ontario Active School Travel Fund aims to prepare students for learning and improve safety in school zones. The Fund has allocated $1 million in funds towards 18 local active school travel initiatives across the province. These projects will run between March 2021 and June 2022. Projects that have been funded aim to: introduce active...

12 March, 2021

From 2017-2020, Evergreen together with the City of Kitchener, the Waterloo Region District School Board, and the Lyle. S. Hallman Family Foundation launched the Neighbourhood Nature Play Initiative. This Kitchener-based collaborative, community-led participatory initiative encouraged children and their families to play and learn in nature by transforming two local parks into vibrant hubs. Through this initiative,...

22 December, 2020

Thank you to Yingyi Lin, PhD student in the Population, Health and Place program at the University of Southern California, and Mariana Brussoni, Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, for providing this post. Walking to school and playing in the streets without adult supervision were previously commonplace, but are no longer the norm in...

24 July, 2020

The Child and Nature Alliance has published their first podcast in partnership with Evergreen Brickworks and the Trillium Foundation. This is the first of a series of podcasts that will focus on highlighting the Forest and Nature School pedagogy. In the podcast, host Stephanie Smith speaks with Gemma and Natalia, two youth play animators on their...

01 April, 2020

New research from Statistics Canada’s Canadian Health Measures Survey reaffirmed the dramatic decline in Canadian children’s fitness seen over the past 35 years with only a third of Canadian school-aged children meeting physical activity guidelines. Other research from the same survey showed that physical activity increases when children are outdoors, with each additional hour spent...

20 November, 2019

Yesterday, Dr. Mark Tremblay was interviewed by CTV Ottawa about the decline in outdoor play among Canadian children and youth and what we can do about it. Click here to view the 4-minute segment....

31 October, 2019
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