Let’s Move!: Federal Employees Help Students Gear Up for Fitness
While Friday the 13th is generally believed to be a day of perpetual bad luck, for the more than 200 students at Charles H. Houston Elementary in Washington, DC, last Friday was anything but unlucky, as students grooved to Kenny Loggins’ Footloose and recognized the winners of the “Why Fitness is Important” essay contest who each received a free pedometer, jump rope, two bottles of water, and new athletic shoes.
The students were gathered as part of a new community-based initiative to fight childhood obesity called Foot Lose. The initiative is the creation of an enthusiastic group of federal agency professionals known as “The Soaring Swans,” who are enrolled in the Executive Leadership Program at the Graduate School in Washington, DC. Through the Foot Lose campaign, federal employees in the Executive Leadership Program are asked to donate new athletic shoes and to encourage children to lose unhealthy habits that lead to childhood obesity.