Support recreation facilities implement healthier food environments

Thanks to funding from the Province of BC grants were made available to support recreation facilities looking to make healthy changes to their food environments.

Grants of up to $1,500 per facility were available and include training as well as online and personal support from the BCRPA SAEH Coordinator. The grant period is from December 1, 2018 until November 30, 2019.

The grant application period has closed.

If you missed the recent webinars discussing the initiatives and grants you can still view a recording.

 

What is Stay Active Eat Healthy (SAEH)?

Stay Active Eat Healthy® is an initiative to support recreation facilities in making healthy changes to their food environments. 

Its objective is to support recreational facilities to take a leadership role within the community to promote a healthy, active lifestyle; to support local governments to provide healthy choices in vending machines, snack bars and food concessions to benefit both workers and the public; and to facilitate collaborative approaches between suppliers (industry) and retailers (site managers) to provide and promote a wider range of healthy choices.

 

Why is this important?

Recreation centres are frequented by 72% of British Columbians (Vancouver Foundation Vital Signs, 2016) and they receive more than 42.6 million visits annually (BCRPA Spaces and Faces Survey, 2017) from infants to seniors. They are the hub of communities for both recreation and community connectedness. While they promote health and wellness through the multitude of programming and services, the food available within recreation facilities is not always aligned with these values. This initiative raises public awareness of healthy eating and supports facilities to transition from junk food to more nutritious snacks.

 

What resources are available to support this initiative?

BCRPA has created the Stay Active Eat Healthy® website, designed for individuals working within a recreation setting who wish to learn more about how to provide healthy foods and beverages in their facility. Staff will find a toolkit designed to inform, inspire and assist them in changing their facility’s food environment. It contains an overview of the food environment, a step-by-step approach to offering healthy choices as well as individual actions and ideas to help achieve their healthy choices goals.

There is an abundance of resources including recipe ideas, sample policies from other facilities, patron surveys and contracts and RFPs.

BCRPA has also developed an e-learning module which provides and interactive course to walk through the five step process to support staff in transforming their facility into a “Healthy Choices Facility”.  There are lots of tools and templates embedded in this course for use.