A Manifesto for Physical Activity

Let's Get Moving is a  scheme we've set up to encourage everyday physical activity. We haven't got any money, but there again we haven't got a budget to manage or employees to direct. Despite this we still think it's possible to encourage people to incorporate more physical activity into their everyday lives and one way we've chosen to do this is get organisations, voluntary, public and private, to sign up to our Manifesto for Physical Activity.

This starts with a simple acknowledgement of the problem, before making a commitment to try to do something about it and suggests one key way in which this might be done.

We acknowledge that physically inactive lifestyles are a major cause of ill health and premature death

We resolve to encourage the people we work with to incorporate regular physical activity into their everyday lives and to work with others to help make this possible.

We believe that one of the simplest ways for most people to do this is to walk, or cycle, for some, or part of, the everyday journeys they currently make.

Now it's easy to sign up to The Manifesto without really doing anything about it. So we're also asking organisations that do sign up, to come up with one or two concrete pledges about how they'd put it into practice.

To get the imaginative juices flowing I've got a few suggestions; in no particular order of significance.

You could give some sort of reward to people who turn up to your site on foot or bicycle.

You could give a reward to an employee who's prepared to give up a site based parking space.

You could give employees/volunteers an allowance for journeys made on foot or by bike.

You could put up notices encouraging people to use the stairs rather than a lift.

You could hold walking meetings/consultaions in the local park or other quiet public space.

You could ban intra office e-mails and encourage people to get up from their desks and walk over to speak to other people instead.

You could set up a scheme for employees, volunteers or clients to exchange garden produce.

You could allow flexible start and/or finish times to the working day so that it would be easier for employees to use public transport to get to work. This way they'd at least walk to and from the bus stop or station.

You could let people visiting your site know where the nearest free parking zones are so that they could complete their journey to you on foot.

You could produce a map with your site at the centre with rings showing how long it would take to get their on foot or by bike. These have the glorious name of isochrones.

You could appoint someone as a cycling or walking champion or encourage people who already walk or cycle to act as walking or cycling buddies to those thinking of taking it up.

Above all, it's about creating a situation where walking or cycling for short journeys is seen as a normal thing to do.

Earlier posts

If it were a drug gives an overview of the health benefits of becoming active

The cost of sitting around in North Yorkshire looks at the likely health impact in the County of North Yorkshire if we got more people moving.