They're only in English. I apologize.
I'm going to talk about quite a few of the things we're doing. We have what we call an active kids and healthy kids strategy, and that strategy was based on evidence collected in 2002 and repeated in 2006 in a study we did with our children and youth in grades 3, 7, and 11. When we did it in 2002, we collected physical activity data, but not just through pedometers. We used accelerometers, and that gave us data not only of number of steps, but it talked about the intensity of the activity and how often that activity took place. When we repeated again in 2006, we added questions on healthy eating so we could see the correlation between the physical activity and the healthy eating.
What we found was that the children and youth in grade 3 met the standard of 60 minutes of physical activity a day in 2002, and they increased that after a lot of the programs we did between 2002 and 2006. Unfortunately, the children and youth in grade 7 were less active in 2006 than they were in 2002, and those in grade 11, the same, they're less active, particularly the females.
Based on the research, we put programs and initiatives into place through the active kids/healthy kids strategy and we tried to do a lot of capacity building. We have a program developed by our fitness leaders' association in Nova Scotia, a youth fitness module. We brought in grade 11 students from all across the province and we trained them to become fitness leaders so they could then go back to their communities and be fitness leaders in their schools and in their communities--so, again, trying to build capacity rather than just one-off programs.
We also have instituted a health promoting schools program. Every school board in Nova Scotia is receiving funding from the Department of Health Promotion and Protection to develop a health-promoting school, based upon their particular needs in that area and using a community development model. The initial focus is on physical activity, healthy eating, and healthy weights, and we encourage school boards to choose where they want to go next, as time goes on. In their particular area, if they've got a real problem with teen pregnancies or tobacco or drugs or addictions or whatever it might be, they'll pick up, but we ask them to focus on physical activity and healthy eating.
Initially, we gave half a million dollars to school boards based on the proposals they put forward to us, and those proposals were based on their needs. We also are involved in the joint consortium for school health and so we have a school health coordinator who is jointly hired by the Department of Education and the Department of Health Promotion and Protection. So, again, we're working very closely with the Department of Education. Schools are an important setting for us because all children go there. It is inclusive, it's equitable, it's not like an after-school program where there are issues with transportation, access, and cost, and so on.
We're also very pleased with the bilateral agreements with Sport Canada, and we have three currently. One of them is a program called a sport animator program. We placed a person in each school board so they could then work with the community, with the municipality, to be able to bridge that gap. As we say, it takes a whole community to raise a child, so that person's job is to work with the school, with the district health authority, with the municipality, to make sure that resources, both human and physical, are available for our students to be active. That has resulted in a lot of different programs in different regions. We have a lot of after-school programs taking place. We've got schools running late buses for students to attend after-school programs. Our sport animator in the Mi'kmaq community has negotiated with all the Mi'kmaq schools in Nova Scotia, and they now have 20 minutes of daily physical activity.
We just recently got a second bilateral from Sport Canada specifically for the Mi'kmaq community, for the aboriginal community, and we have pilot projects taking place in all 13 communities.
Also, we have a piece of research from Saint Mary's University in Halifax, which was doing consultations with communities to find out what their needs are, so that they can identify what they need to be able to increase physical activity opportunities and offer healthy choices.
As far as healthy eating is concerned, we have a huge amount going on. We were the first province in Canada to have a healthy eating strategy. We have four areas we focus on. Breastfeeding is a very, very important one. The research around breastfeeding shows that the risk of developing obesity is directly related to the length of exclusive breastfeeding--this is World Health Organization data.
Also, we work with children and youth. We have a school program, Healthy Eating Nova Scotia. We set it up consultatively, again working with the communities we're trying to affect.
So we met with all of the schools, and all of the parents and the children. We drafted a policy, and they thought it was rather harsh. So we worked with them, and we phased things in over a five-year period. What we found now is that many of the schools are way ahead of where they should be because they've really engaged and embraced this school food policy. No fat fries in schools any more: making the healthy choice the easy choice is the thing we're looking at doing, and it's really working well.
A lot of our local producers are working with us. The apple producers in the Annapolis Valley are bagging up apples. All of the pizza producers in the area are now moving to whole-wheat flour for their pizza crusts. It's just amazing, once you engage the whole community, the private sector as well as everyone involved.
Many, many interviews have been done over the past few months with our children and youth, and they love the salads, and they love the yoghurt, and they are really doing well with that particular piece.
We're also involved, as everyone else is, with increasing fruit and vegetable consumption. There's a whole food security issue around fruit and vegetables. Again, we're working with the local producers in Nova Scotia to try to solve that problem.
Other things that we do.... We have a tripartite forum in Nova Scotia. We work with the aboriginal community. We have committees set up. One of the committees is a health committee, and one is a sport and recreation committee. There's a cultural committee, a social committee, an economic development committee.
There are three co-chairs for every committee. There's a federal co-chair from INAC, a provincial co-chair from our provincial government, and then a co-chair from the council of chiefs. We meet on a regular basis, and we work together to identify what needs to be done for the health of the communities. We're really working hard in the area of physical activity and healthy eating.
We're trying to collect as much data as possible on numbers of people. Again, we need to know where we need to go. We want to use evidence and informed decision-making in order to be effective, because we are investing a large amount of money in Nova Scotia.
We also have regional offices for physical activities, for sport and recreation across Nova Scotia. Those regional offices work in the area of community development, and they work with communities to try to enable them to increase opportunities for physical activity and to work with the local groups, particularly the district health authorities and the schools. So we're trying to bring people together.
We have great interdepartmental cooperation. We're also working with volunteers, because we're finding that.... Our minister of health promotion and protection was just made the minister of volunteerism. We now have a ministry of volunteerism, so it's part of our department. Physical activity, sport and recreation, is built on the backs of volunteers, so we're finding that this is going to be a really helpful piece for us.
We help communities with building recreation facilities, and we do it in a collaborative way with municipalities and communities. If your school came to us and said “We need a playground”, then we offer planning assistance to them. Then we will pay one-third, work with the municipality to pay one-third, and then the school and the community would raise the other one-third. So there are all kinds of opportunities to increase, improve, refresh, and build physical activity infrastructure.
I'll stop there and see if there are any questions. I could go on for probably another two hours, but I realize I only have ten minutes.