Empowering Healthy Choices in Schools, Homes and Communities (SNAP-Ed)—A three-year nutrition and physical activity education program that supports participating sites increase opportunities for young children to eat healthy foods and engage in physical activity throughout the learning day.
Reach for the Stars! Learning Collaborative — A statewide training series for early care and education (ECE) providers designed to transform current practices within ECE settings to create healthier environments for young children, staff, and families.
Growing Fit — A one-day training and toolkit designed to support early care and education (ECE) providers with developing a program wellness policy that promotes best practices among young children, staff, and families. The Growing Fit toolkit supports the Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning’s efforts to improve ECE quality through the state’s Quality Rated System.
Using a step-by-step approach, Growing Fit guides ECE staff through the development of their wellness policy while supporting them with building upon their program strengths and identifying their areas for improvement. This training and toolkit feature:
Growing Fit has been developed in partnership with the Georgia Departments of Public Health and Early Care and Learning.
Girls Empowering Movement (GEM)— Girls are at the center of this one-of-a-kind effort to increase physical activity and the fitness levels of Georgia’s middle school girls. Currently, only 51% of girls have healthy aerobic capacity in 5th grade; by 12th grade, that number drops to 31%. This program provides girls with access to regular physical activity while empowering them to become change- agents themselves. The program, designed by girls for girls, debuted in the summer of 2021 with a goal to motivate 200,000 girls to get moving. Now thousands of girls across Georgia are engaging with programming, resources, and a peer network to get active, build leadership skills, and develop the social and emotional tools needed to live happy healthy lives. Click {here} to learn more about this program.
Trainings
Empowering Healthy Choices in Schools, Homes and Communities (SNAP-Ed)—A three-year nutrition and physical activity education program that supports participating sites increase opportunities for young children to eat healthy foods and engage in physical activity throughout the learning day.
Power Up for 30— A collaborative effort between HealthMPowers and Georgia Shape, the governor’s statewide initiative to increase physical activity opportunities to incorporate an additional 30 minutes of physical activity—outside of PE, every day for every child and youth. Power Up for 30 gives educators, schools, and sites resources, strategies, and best practices for creating an active environment that can increase attendance, focus, and overall health for all of Georgia’s children and youth. his program emerged from research demonstrating a strong relationship between physical activity and brain function, translating into more academic achievement, better classroom behavior, and reduced depression and anxiety.
FitnessGram(r)— Every year, Georgia schools are required to measure students’ fitness in grades 1-12, using the Cooper Institute’s FitnessGram assessment. HealthMPowers offers training, resources, and technical assistance for conducting the assessment, using the results to inform strategies and programming for student’s overall health and fitness and engaging youth as leaders on their journey to lifelong fitness.
Out of School Time (OST)
Programs & Services
Cooking Matters – Share our Strength’s Cooking Matters curriculum is utilized to teach youth cooking skills and how to prepare nutritious, easy meals while gaining the knowledge to make healthier choices. During the 6-week Cooking Matters series, youth are empowered to make their own healthy meals and snacks at home. By the end of the cooking course, youth are equipped with more knowledge to make educated personal nutrition choices wherever they go – in school, in restaurants, or in the grocery store!
Gardening – Out of School time garden lessons are designed to support sites who consider themselves to have minimal garden experience. Lessons support sites for the 3 main growing seasons: Fall, winter, and spring. Staff access easy to follow “back pocket” garden lessons with little to no equipment. Sites are equipped with the necessary materials using Captain Planet Garden kit, and the HealthMPowers’ Garden Basket. Staff are trained in the use of these tools to ensure the sustainability of the garden. The OST Garden Basket lesson booklet emphasizes farm to school teachings and enhances agricultural education and supports seasonal crop production. These short lessons require little preparation for novice gardeners. The lessons are quite diverse, and are appropriate for elementary and middle school age youth.
Physical Activity- The 5-week physical activity series is designed to empower all staff and youth to achieve 30 minutes of physical activity each day in the out of school time setting. The 5-week curriculum has an introductory week built into the start where youth and staff have the opportunity to brainstorm group agreements and agree on the physical activity skills that youth will practice over the following 4 weeks. Each week incorporates strategies from Georgia Power Up for 30 and lessons from BOKS (Build Our Kid’s Success) before/after school exercise program allowing youth to get creative and modify physical activities in order to create a more inclusive space. Resources include a physical activity “kit” complete with items like hula hoops, bean bags, cones, etc. Sites also receive an instructional guide complete with a lesson plan template that can be modified to utilize over 10 different functional fitness skills. Our series also utilizes the world-famous HealthMPowers’ Game Locker that features over 100 games all for different sized settings!
Family Engagement Events- The Out of School Time team is always prepared to support our sites with their family engagement events! Sites are offered a menu of services that include infused water demonstrations, taste testing opportunities, “Rethink your drink” sugar demonstrations and physical activity facilitation support!
OST Trainings – Out of School Time Sites engage 1-3 staff in three HealthMPowers trainings each year. These trainings are designed to empower OST site health teams to implement the HealthMPowers program, provide training on the National Afterschool Association Healthy Eating Physical Activity (NAA HEPA) Standards, introduce best practices and updated research for healthy eating and physical activity instruction (including Georgia’s Power Up for 30) and reinforce strategies to increase youth engagement and leadership. Using the OST platform, site teams complete the NAA HEPA needs assessment and their results guide the development of annual action plans. Evidence of healthy eating and physical activity improvements targeting policy, programming and practice determine PSE impact. Trainings provide team members with networking opportunities along with the information, skills, and resources required to provide healthy eating and physical activity support and resources to their site’s youth and families.
Evaluation – Evaluation measures include self-report pre/post student behavior data, needs assessments, action plans targeting policy, system, environmental and promotional changes and evidence of completion, resource usage, success stories and training evaluations. All relevant data collection and evaluation results are provided back to participating sites and organizational leadership for program improvements. On-going status, results and reports are made available with the real-time dashboard.
Programs & Services
