60 minutes of physical activity for Ontario kids

Another wonderful story through Google Alerts; The Ontario government in partnership with Active at School is trying to ensure that the kids participate in minimum 60 minutes of physical activity everyday. Their goal is to spread the campaign all across Canada and build a generation of healthy and sharp kids.

Read the complete story here.

Personally I feel the most important bit in this story is the quote by Education Minister Liz Sandals. She says "This isn't about 60 minutes of phys-ed. This is about 60 minutes of physical activity during the course of the day; this might be before school, during phys-ed class, at noon doing extracurricular ... or after school with some sort of community recreation activity.” And that is so important to note. Move! Karachi too is not about conducting intense workouts, but in fact aims to incorporate some necessary amount of physical activity the everyday lives of Karachite kids. Maybe we could start arranging cricket matches for kids in community parks, Pakistanis absolutely love cricket. What do you think? Comment away.

Kids enjoy fitness training at Brummitt Elementary

What a wonderful work this teacher is doing to encourage her students in gym class to stay healthy and set realistic fitness goals. I am so glad this story popped up in my e-mail via Google Alerts because I really am inspired by the work of Ms. LouAnn Hopson from Brummit Elementary.

Read the complete story here.

Students in Ms. Hopson's class enjoy sports like kick ball, dodge ball and hokey, keep a personalized fitness journal, learn about the importance of stretching and "like to be strong and healthy" as 8 year old Marie Dandinidis puts it.

This story has actually given me some great ideas. Like Ms. Hopson, I too would like to incorporate the FIT principle in my campaign - it's just something that I'm learning about in my Advanced Fitness class and I think it's pretty cool. Maybe I could create "virtual posters" about it and post them here. Thoughts? Comment away.

The Aim

It is absolutely heart-breaking to see young kids become targets of bullying because they are over-weight and have never in their lives received proper guidelines to maintain a healthy diet - I've seen people very dear to me, whom I shall not name, lose confidence and struggle everyday in school as kids called them names. I believe it is now time for Karachites to take a step towards a healthier tomorrow and become more active in their daily lives.

The Move Karachi! Project is a 'social media for social change' campaign that will target this important issue in the city of Karachi. I believe social media posses an immense amount of power when it comes to reaching out to the masses. More importantly, is has now become the easiest mode to get a message across to younger audiences and effectively grasp their attention towards a good cause.

The aim for Move Karachi! is to encourage kids to eat healthy and try to increase the amount of their daily physical activity. Parents would be able to help kids find posts about easy-to-follow dance routines, fun flash-workouts and healthy diet plans, on several different social media platforms. The links to these will shortly be posted on this blog (so stay tuned!). Furthermore, through the campaign, I would like to start a trend to organize 'flash-mobs' in schools, as part of enabling students to reach adulthood at a healthier weight while enjoying themselves and having a good time.

If successful, the campaign could make a serious impact on the lives of struggling kids all over Karachi and eventually spread throughout the nation producing a healthier, more active future generation of Pakistan.

A Little About Myself

I guess you could summarize my personality as following: somebody who tries very hard each day to live life to the fullest, enjoys art and architecture, complete maniac when it comes to movies, food and Game of Thrones and has interest in photography, graphic design, performing arts and all that good jazz.

My name's Muhammad Abrar and before I say anything else, I just want you to know how much I appreciate the fact that you're visiting my blog. I'm a 16 year old foreign exchange student - more like a Youth Ambassador to Pakistan - currently living the American dream. Sponsored by the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study Program, I'm placed in a serene and peaceful little town of Painted Post in Upstate New York. 

I'd like you to know that my life is not just about fun and games. In fact I happen to be on a very important mission with the help of PH International's Global New Media Lab. My hometown, the city of Karachi is very dear to me. When I return from my exchange year, I want to make a difference in the lives of members in my community and target a very important issue, that is childhood obesity.

Make sure you come back and see what plans I've got to target this problem and note that I will always be open to any comments, questions or concerns.