WalkingBus: Combining Safety, Fun, and Physical

WalkingBus addresses the ERASMUS+ Sports objective ‘Encouraging a healthy lifestyle for all’ with a specific focus on children by supporting walking adoption as a means of commuting to school and other after-school activities that can improve the physical activity of children. A walking bus is defined as a supervised group of children walking to or from school (or other premises) along a set route and picking up or dropping off ‘passengers’ at specific points along the way. According to Woodroffe et al. (1998), there is an increasing number of children who do not take sufficient regular exercise because they are taken to school by car, due to safety concerns, leading to adverse health outcomes not only in childhood but also in later life. In Greece, 52% of road traffic fatalities among children are pedestrians, in Italy 24%, and in Turkey 41%. At the same time, in Greece, 13.8% of children of age 5-19 are obese, in Italy 12.5%, and in Turkey 11.5% (European Commission, 2022; Ozturk, 2022; WHO, 2016). The project will address this problem in these countries and develop Open Educational Resources (OERs) open to parents, children, and educators/trainers throughout Europe, and beyond. WalkingBus will utilize several Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the project’s outcomes and overall quality of the project, based on three (3) pillars: 1) Building the fundamentals on WalkingBus, 2) WalkingBus in action, and 3) Stakeholder engagement. Apart from the actual training of the children, parents, and trainers, and the actual walking busses that will be realized in Thessaloniki/Greece, in Sassari/Italy, and in Sakarya, Turkey (in which 50 children will participate, totaling 150), the key results of the WalkingBus project will be the following: 1) Two (2) manuals (‘Train the walker’, and ‘WalkingBus descriptor/manual’) for schools, clubs, regions, cities, academies, and NGOs, and the ‘Evaluation & lessons learnt’ report for the policy-makers and authorities. that is published through this page expresses the views of the project beneficiaries only and it does not represent the views of the European Union or the European Commission. It shall not be deemed to constitute legal or official notice on behalf of the European Union or the European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the European Commission can be held responsible for this content nor the use thereof made by any third parties. Page 2 of 2