Project promotes active lifestyles

Powell River’s newest library will take bookings of a different type.

New bikes being purchased for lending in what is being termed a bicycle library will hopefully stimulate Powell River youth to pursue active lifestyles.

At the Tuesday, May 19, City of Powell River committee of the whole meeting, Dr. Chris Morwood and Chris Bratseth, co-chairs of Powell River Youth Active Transportation Project, outlined steps that are being taken to provide young people with healthy activities.

Bratseth said there is a belief in the program that every student should have access to a bike. When he sent an email to teachers across School District 47 he determined that many students do not own a bicycle.

As a result, an application was made and a $5,000-grant was procured from ImagineBC. With the money, 20 bicycles will be purchased from local providers. Local sponsors have also purchased helmets for the program. There is a fundraiser planned in Powell River for youth wellness and funds will be used to purchase 20 more bikes.

“The idea is that Powell River will be the first community in BC to have its own bike library specifically for youth,” Bratseth said.

Something the organizers have been thinking about doing in the school district is having a small up-front fee for students to take bikes out on loan. It would be $10 and the students could take out bikes for the entire year.

Bratseth said the students are absolutely thrilled that they can ride these new bikes. He said in some cases, one-third of students in a class do not have bicycles.

At issue for health care professionals is the fact that children are a lot less active than they used to be, said Morwood. A recent study showed only 10 per cent of children in Canada are getting an hour of activity per day.

“That’s a dramatic decrease from where it used to be,” Morwood said. “There’s lots of reasons for that but one of the big reasons is screen time.”

Morwood said average screen time for young people is about four hours per day.

There are many health consequences being seen by educators and health professionals that weren’t commonly seen in young people in the past, such as diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Stress, insomnia and behavioural issues are evident and researchers are predicting this generation will be the first to have lower life expectancy than their parents, according to Morwood.

One of the ideas that many experts think is the best place to start is getting children walking or biking.

“That would have a really large impact,” Morwood said.

Bratseth said it’s one thing to speak about biking and teach it in a traditional classroom setting, but experiential learning is learning by doing and can be very effective. It’s a process of getting students out into the natural environment to experience biking first hand. With assistance from the mountain biking club from Brooks Secondary School, bike skills classes were facilitated across the school district. Bratseth said the most powerful part of the program for students and educators was to see students teaching other students. There were six students at the grade four level in the school district that had never ridden a bicycle.

Another innovative mechanism to encourage student participation and engagement in cycling has been a bike rack project. Bike racks are a unique way to engage students in a design process and get them to think about healthy transportation alternatives.

Morwood said there was also a project in local schools where students took on bike rack design. In each school, a favourite was selected and it turns out most of them feature local wildlife and fauna, as well as hockey-themed ideas. Children can interact with the racks, they will be solid, long-lasting and feature bright colours. It’s hoped that the dual-credit welding program through Brooks and Vancouver Island University can be participatory and start to produce these bike racks for schools as well as to be placed in commercial areas around town.

At the city’s Thursday, May 28, finance committee meeting, the bike rack project was reviewed. The committee is recommending to city council that $10,000 from the Community Works Fund be allocated to support the Youth Active Transportation Steering Committee for student education and the fabrication of bike racks.