October 16, 2017 EVENTS:
Heritage Woods Secondary School, Port Moody, BC
Move 4 Mana
Move 4 Mana from Maira Gimenes on Vimeo.
A group of innovative young Canadians at Heritage Woods Secondary School have an idea that could offer all of Canada a way to not just burn off all those extra calories, but to actually collect and redistribute (or donate) those calories to people in need. It’s timely given this weeks news of numbers of overweight teens increasing 10x in the last 40 years!
As we in Canada and the US struggle with abundance and over-nutrition, more than half the world struggles with lack of food and under-nutrition. As Raj Patel said in his book a few years back, we live in a world that is simultaneously “Stuffed and Starved”. Our entire globe seems to be struggling with a dysfunctional relationship with food, and it’s quite literally killing us!
The students said to themselves, what if we stopped looking at this stuffed and starved problem of our globe as two wildly different issues, but saw them instead as two sides of the same coin? The students at Heritage Woods have learned in their economics classes that abundance and scarcity are inextricably tied in economic theory. (The Nobel Prize in economics awarded this week supports these kids behavior focus by the way!) So they are asking, what if we took our abundance and actually used it to balance the scarcity in another part of the globe? We’ve always known that was a way to motivate people to give dollars. But what about giving something else? What about giving of our energy by getting active?
That’s what Heritage Woods students will be doing starting on World Food Day 2017. Using their phones as trackers, they’ll keep track of their activity as they partner with US-based Active for Good and Mana Nutrition to run what they are calling a “Move 4 Mana”challenge. Rather than focus on calories, and obesity and the negative side… these students are instead wisely focused on getting active. Sure, better choices around food are important, but the Heritage Woods students want to show us all that we all can get off the couch and get active. So when Heritage Woods students get active over a 30 day period starting at a huge World Food Day kick off October 16th, they will know that every step they take and every time they get active, they are actually “donating” that activity to children in need. Heritage Woods kids might not have a ton of money to give, but they do have a ton of energy…and they are about to start giving it! “I can’t tell you how excited we are,” says Marilyn Nunn, teacher at Heritage Woods. “This generation of kids has a heart to give and very wide world view. Move for Mana helps both our local community and the wider world.”
So how does this all work? In keeping with the “it takes a village” mentality, two very important Canadian partners are stepping in to help make this all happen. The first is Langley, BC based Food for Famine Society who will actually match the donated energy that these kids collect on their phones. So every time Heritage Woods students get moving, ride their bikes, go for a hike, go to the gym…any sort of physical activity that they love…Food for Famine will take the donated activity and provide the money needed turn it into packets of RUTF… a specially formulated packet of medicine-food designed to feed and save the lives of severely malnourished children around the globe. Once these packets are created by the hard work and activity of Heritage Woods students, then World Vision Canada will step in and get those packets to children who need them most. This challenge will provide urgently needed RUTF for children who are being treated in nutrition centers by World Vision in places like Somalia and South Sudan.
So each partner plays their part. The students get active, Food for Famine matches their activity with dollars, and World Vision gets it to kids in need. As Maria Martini director of Food for Famine said of the partnership, “This has never been done before in Canada. Our youth are taking over in the fight for malnourished children. As they get active, we see the benefits of healthier happier Canadian kids, and we love that matching their activity has a double impact. We are addressing inactivity here…one of the biggest health issues that Canada has today, and at the same time fighting Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) in other parts of the world.” World Vision VP Jamie McIntosh agrees, “If you think about it,” says McIntosh, “we are unleashing the first ever group of true ACTIVISTS. Young people in Canada getting active for the good of the world and for their own good. It might be the best example of a win/win I have ever seen.”
These students have created an entire event taking place on October 16, 2017 with the sole purpose to encourage more awareness and more Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food for malnourished kids!
Mark Moore, Huffington Post
We are thrilled to share this inspiring video, Move 4 MANA with you! Made by the students at Heritage Woods Secondary.
Original Calorie Cloud (USA)
What Is Calorie Cloud (USA) or Move 4 Mana (Canada)?
Calorie Cloud is a platform and set of programs that converts the abundance of calories burned in the USA into life saving food for undernourished kids. Calorie Cloud provides solutions that connect getting active with helping severely malnourished children. By inspiring people to get active with these 2 challenges, the calories burned are turned into sponsored pledges for life-saving RUTF.
The goal is to inspire people to get active for good while helping severely malnourished kids. The approach, through sponsorship, is to convert burned calories into lifesaving nutrition for children in the developing world who need it most. Calorie Cloud is currently focused in two areas: Workplace Activity Challenges and the UNICEF Kid Power Program. It’s time to get active for good!
