The Boys & Girls Club of Marion County has been selected as grant recipient by the Marion Community Foundation to run Triple Play: A Game Plan for the Mind, Body and Soul. Triple Play encourages Club members to eat healthier (mind), become more physically active (body) and increase their ability to engage in healthy relationships (soul).
A recent study of more than 2,000 children ages 9-14 who attend Boys & Girls Clubs showed that Triple Play succeeded in getting them to exercise more, eat healthier foods and feel better about themselves.
“We are very excited at the opportunity to run Triple Play at our sites in 2012,” said Allison Miracle, Executive Director of the Club. “With support from great community partners like Marion Community Foundation, we are helping young people learn to live a healthy lifestyle, providing them a pathway to a great future.” The Club expects 500 youth to experience the Triple Play program thanks to the new funding.
Triple Play: A Game Plan for the Mind, Body and Soul was launched in 2005 by Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) in collaboration with the Department of Health and Human Services with support from The Coca-Cola Company to encourage kids to eat healthier, become more physically active and increase their ability to engage in healthy relationships.
The study mentioned above found that Triple Play kids increased to 90 percent of the federally recommended amount of daily exercise, which is 60 minutes a day for children, while their peers outside the program decreased to 78 percent. To date, Triple Play has helped more than one million kids learn the importance of physical activity and proper nutrition. In 2011, the WellPoint Foundation joined BGCA and Coca-Cola as a Triple Play sponsor.
You can learn more about the program at www.bgca.org/tripleplay.
