October 3rd, 2007

Walk to School Day is October 3, 2007. During that week, parents, caregivers, faculty, staff, and children are encouraged to walk to school together as many days as possible. Public health, safety, education and elected officials are urged to take part in the event.

Walk to School Day is the first important step in changing your school’s environment to make it safer for students to walk and bike to school on a regular basis. Its main goal is to raise the awareness of this important issue. Additional goals of Walk to School Day are to:

• Encourage adults to teach children safe pedestrian behaviors
• Have adults help children identify and practice safe routes to school
• Create and/or raise awareness of how walkable a community is (or isn’t) and where improvements are needed
• Remind everyone of the tremendous health benefits of regular, daily walking
• Share valuable time with local community leaders, parents and children.

The SC Coalition for Physical Activity and the SC Department of Transportation are sponsoring a statewide promotion of Walk to School Day. We have the goal of registering 200 elementary and middle schools on our website to host events on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007. It is our goal that 100,000 children will participate in Walk to School Day! Please register your school today!

If you have any questions, please contact Amy Splittgerber, Executive Director of the SCCPPA at (803) 798-9086 or by email splittae@dhec.sc.gov.