For many families, Jump Rope for Heart is one of the most fun and active ways to support The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Wellington-Dufferin.
This year, over 15,000 students will take part in Jump Rope for Heart as part of the foundation’s Heart Month activities. While students are a huge part of the events’ success, the people behind the scenes have an enormous impact as well.
Krista Pedersen, a grade 4 teacher at Victoria Terrace Public School in Fergus, has been involved for the past nine years, the last six as a coach for the school’s skipping team. The skipping clubs run from January through May and students skip during recess breaks.
“We teach them some footwork and other tricks, but a lot of the learning comes from other students. The main idea is to have fun and to be active,” said Pedersen.
Skippers are encouraged to audition for the demo team where they spend extra time learning choreography and practicing tricks and routines.
“The demo teams come out at the beginning of the Jump Rope for Heart events, talk about heart healthy living, and get students excited to participate,” said Audra Thompson, area coordinator for the local foundation.
Pedersen said the combination of healthy living messages and physical activity that the Jump Rope events bring are important. “As a community fundraiser, Jump Rope for Heart is something the kids can relate to because so many of them know someone who has had a heart attack or stroke.”
Victoria Terrace has seen an increase in student involvement over the years, with students continuing to come back to participate. “I often have students stopping me in the hall to ask when skipping club is going to start and when try-outs for the demo team are going to happen,” said Pederson. “We usually only lose team members when they move away or graduate from grade 6.” This year, 235 students from the school will be participating in Jump Rope for Heart. For more information about The Heart and Stroke Foundation and Heart Month, visit www.heartandstroke.ca.
Did you know?
Every day this year, 7 Wellington-Dufferin residents will be hospitalized because of heart disease. Less than 50 years ago it was unimaginable:
– that individuals could survive and thrive after a heart attack;
– that the impact of a stroke could be reversed if caught in time;
– that doctors could prevent heart attacks and strokes in people at high risk before they happened; and
– that heart defects in babies could be repaired and they could live a healthy active life.
The foundation’s officials still dare to imagine:
– that all strokes and heart disease will be stopped before they happen; and
– that with help we will make heart disease and stroke history;
Here are just a few of the local initiatives that are taking place:
– through the Restart a Heart, Restart a Life campaign it was able to place automated external defibrillators in 35 new sites in the Wellington-Dufferin region and train eight staff members at each of those sites
– through the community advocacy fund, the Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph In Motion project was chosen as a grant recipient of $25,000 in funding to support their advocacy efforts to increase the level of physical activity of children.
– support of a research team right here at the University of Guelph.
– provide all schools, Big Bike captains and leadership volunteers with a CPR Anytime kit that allows families, friends and the general public to learn the core skills of CPR for adults and children in just 20 minutes using their own personal kit. The kit contains everything needed to learn basic CPR, and skills can be learned anywhere, from the comfort of a family home to a large community group setting;
– The foundation developed a model of excellence to provide equal access and delivery of stroke care across the province. This led to the establishment of Regional and District Stroke Centres in the region (Brantford, Kitchener, Hamilton, Mississauga, Niagara) which provide the latest in stroke care and preventative medicine to the almost 240,000 residents of the Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph area.
