1

Making healthy choices easy choices

By the students of the 6th Grade – 1st Primary School of Hersonissos

We have chosen to work out the issue with our students of the sixth grade in the frame of their

subject "Social and Civil Education". We tried to do an interdisciplinary approach with the

collaboration of class teacher Ms. Kadi Eva, Music teacher Mrs. Charalabopoulou Vaso,

Informatics teacher Mr. Haniotakis Ioannis and Physical Activity teacher Mr. Papadakis.

First of all we had to clarify the basic terms and the aim:

“HEALTH is the state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence

of disease or infirmity”. (WHO)

“HEALTH PROMOTION is the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve,

their health. To reach a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, an individual or

group must be able to identify and to realize aspirations, to satisfy needs, and to change or cope with

the environment”. (WHO)

In other words, health promotion requires the identification of obstacles to the adoption of healthy

public policies in non-health sectors, and ways of removing them, or simply:

How to make healthy choices easy choices

We started with a field study, an autopsy, of the obstacles around the school that do not facilitate

the movement of pedestrians and cyclists, as well as the shortcomings and problems in play grounds in

the neighborhood (P 1.2.3)

P1. Oups…! P2. Obviously we need both, hard work and laugh brakes

2

.

P.3 Boy's sad face tells everything....

Then we discussed:

The problems/obstacles

How are they created?

Who can fix them?

How can we help?

Bearing in mind that active citizen:

DO NOT ONLY AND ALWAYS GRUBLE

RECOGNIZE THEIR RESPONSIBITIES

ASK OTHERS TO TAKE THEIR RESPONSIBILITIES TOO

TRY TO FIND REALISTIC, FEASIBLE SOLUTIONS FOR PROGRESS

TAKE PART, ACCORDING TO THEIR STRENGTH, IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE

SOLUTIONS

3

P4. It might look confusing but so are problems until you start solving them.

During our PTE classes we made a power point presentation.

Finally, when we were ready, we invited local authorities and representatives of parents association

to present our work and discuss with them.

It was a conference between responsible, active citizens. (P 5.6.7)

P5.6 Democracy

4

P7. A nice meaningful song as a closure was necessary to artistically emphasize our arguments.

During the meeting we had the chance to claim our right for facilities and time for physical activity,

to ask for changes and improvements from those who can do them, and of course to admit our own

responsibilities.

About the issues we raised we agreed that:

We live in a blessed beautiful place, which, however, has its glitches, and needs care of those

who love him.

Some of them can be solved locally with our help (e.g. school and neighborhood play grounds),

Some others are difficult to be solved (e.g. there is no provision in the neighborhood for

pedestrian areas and bicycle lanes) and need time, money and of course, as always, will.

And some others (funding infrastructures, PE classes etc) are beyond the reach of local

authorities and need political claiming and pressure.

Everything we learned and discussed is in the following chart.

It is not complete of course but it is an honest effort.

We suggest that you study it from the right (aim) to the left (policy and decision makers)

We wish to thank Deputy Major Mr. Fragiadakis, Civil Engineer Mr. Kasapakis, and the Presidents of the 2 School

Boards Mrs. Bageri and Mrs. Moudraki for their valuable support.

5