{"id":25170,"date":"2019-11-08T11:46:18","date_gmt":"2019-11-08T16:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=25170"},"modified":"2019-11-14T22:46:51","modified_gmt":"2019-11-15T03:46:51","slug":"underprivileged-youngsters-to-get-healthy-start-with-all-kids-can-play-relaunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/underprivileged-youngsters-to-get-healthy-start-with-all-kids-can-play-relaunch\/","title":{"rendered":"Underprivileged youngsters to get healthy start with All Kids Can Play relaunch"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Aurora is often seen as an affluent community, but all\ntoo many youngsters are facing financial situations that prevent them from\ntaking part in organized sports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sport Aurora\u2019s All Kids Can Play program is once again\nhoping to help families bridge that gap with the re-launch of their All Kids\nCan Play program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The All Kids Can Play Program, now in partnership with\nWelcoming Arms, was formally rebooted this week after its programming was put\non the backburner following a re-think of their best practices after grant\nfunding dried up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to organizers, the program has been retooled\nwith improved public awareness programs, bolstered distribution to enable All\nKids Can Play (AKCP) to invest even more in physical activity locally, and an\nimproved program of fundraising to make sure their efforts are sustainable into\nthe future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is hardly headline news today that kids spend too\nmuch time on their devices and not enough time running, jumping, or playing\nsports,\u201d say organizers. \u201cSchools only offer part of the solution, with 20\nminutes of daily physical activity mandated in the elementary school\ncurriculum, and according to ParticipACTION, only 35 per cent of children aged\n5 \u2013 17 are getting the required amount of physical activity to maintain health.\nBut not all families can afford the cost of extracurricular activities, be they\nindividual or team sports. Parents report in multiple surveys that the cost of\nsport participation is keeping one-third of Canadian youth off of fields and\nout of gyms.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sport Aurora\u2019s Ron Weese elaborates that organizations\nlike JumpStart, sponsored by Canadian Tire, have been working to address these\nneeds, but more still needs to be done at the local level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe did a little review of our program and we saw what\nwas going on with Canadian Tire JumpStart, and we decided to relaunch the\nprogram,\u201d Mr. Weese tells The Auroran. \u201cOne of our plans was to find partners\nto pull together more [young] recipients. It\u2019s a difficult thing to identify\npeople who are without funds and maybe one or two kids have a hard time saying\nso and asking for help, so we went to Welcoming Arms, who see a lot of people,\nand asked what their [process] was, and they were similar to our own.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And a partnership was born. The AKCP program will now\nwork with Welcoming Arms, the local charity spearheaded by seven local churches\nhelping community members in need, regardless of religion, to connect with\nyouth who might benefit from all the benefits \u201cplay\u201d has to offer. Welcoming\nArms was excited to partner with them, leading the vetting efforts, and AKCP in\nturn was eager to point other families in need who come to them directly for\nsport assistance, in the direction of Welcoming Arms for additional help in\nmaking ends meet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf individuals make an application to Welcoming Arms, we\nwill automatically accept them without having to go through another application\nprocess,\u201d says Mr. Weese. \u201cWe\u2019re streamlining this for people who are in\nhardship.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The measure of success of this new partnership, he adds,\nwill be twofold: attracting and distributing more funds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBefore, it was kind of a difficult thing because we\ndidn\u2019t want to go out and advertise we had lots of money, because we didn\u2019t\nhave lots of money; what we wanted to do was work through our sport\norganizations and others who knew about us because we didn\u2019t want to run out of\nfunds,\u201d he says. \u201cNow, what we have, we think, is an opportunity to go out and\nlook for more funds and more recipients. Up until now, we have only had a few\nindividual [donors] who have believed in what we were doing. We\u2019re not a\nrecognized charity, so we couldn\u2019t give receipts for income tax purposes, but\nas part of our workplan we\u2019re hoping to do that in the New Year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe real importance of this program is not to help make\nkids athletes; the importance of this is so children who have been left on the\nsidelines because of financial difficulty have now been able to participate\nwith their friends, because as much as physical activity and participating in\nsports is a valuable thing in and of itself, the real important thing that we\nheard from the recipients is the kids who joined the program and participated\nin the program got to have that real social relationship with other kids they\nwent to school with, or kids on their block of people who they met. This is a\nthing that we do for kids to be involved in sport, but sport has a bigger\ncontext to it and it is really about removing the financial barriers so\nchildren can play and be a part of the whole play and social interaction.\nParents have told us that their kids can now go out and play with their friends\nand maybe they couldn\u2019t before.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information on the All Kids Can Play program, visit www.sportaurora.ca.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir <\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aurora is often seen as an affluent community, but all too many youngsters are facing financial situations that prevent them from taking part in organized sports. Sport Aurora\u2019s All Kids Can Play program is once again hoping to help families bridge that gap with the re-launch of their All Kids Can Play program. The All […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5,24,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news","category-news-sports","category-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6xY","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-26 00:37:02","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}