Join In > Ride2School > Councils, partners and evaluation > $4 million for 4 years - 34,000 students get on their bikes
$4 million for 4 years - 34,000 students get on their bikes
On Friday 20 October Premier Steve Bracks announced an additional $2.9 million to expand Ride2School. This will enable the program to be developed in secondary schools and for more events to promote young people riding more often.
"State Beats the Bulge"
With this headline in mind, Bicycle Victoria has been having discussions with the Hon Bronwyn Pike, the Minister for Health, about ways to get more children and adolescents on their bikes. The Minister understands the benefits of building a daily dose of exercise into students' lives. Overweight and obesity affect one in five Australian children and adolescents and at the current rate 65% of children will be overweight or obese by 2020.
Ride2School is now a $4 million 4 year program developed to get more students cycling more often. We aim to have 500 schools and 34,000 new regular riders by the end of 2010. It's the first time exercise has been funded as a preventative health measure on this scale - we're innoculating 34,000 children against obesity.
This will set the students up for a lifetime of active travel helping them to avoid heart disease, diabetes and depression.
We'll have state wide riding events including Ride2School Day, the 50km Bikeathon to help schools with healthy fundraising and a 500km gold medal challenge for secondary students to get serious about riding. Each year students will compete to win a bike - there's 1000 a year for Year 6 students who are committed to riding, have completed Bike Ed, shown leadership in their school bike club and live in disadvantaged areas. There's also $100,000 a year for school bike sheds. All this on top of our excellent Ride2School primary program - have a look around our website while you're here.
We think the Minister and the Premier deserve our thanks on behalf of a generation of young people!
The Minister steered the project through her department and championed it to Treasury and her Cabinet colleagues. The Premier saw its sense and launched it at Kangaroo Flat Primary School in Bendigo.
Please let Minister Pike know that you appreciate her efforts with this email.
Please let the Premier know that he has supported a great initiative with this email.
Here is the Bicycle Victoria media release. (pdf 86kb)
Here is the Premier's media release (pdf 91kb)
