The professional sportsmen and women of today are also held up as icons by our children and so using sport is a great way of engaging with children who may otherwise be disenchanted with more traditional methods of education. Plus, with so much coverage in the press on childhood obesity surely it has to be a good thing that children are running around in the fresh air as opposed to sitting watching television or playing computer games.
This is one of the main reasons that I was so keen for my company Twofeet, the UK's first in-school shoe fitting service, to support SportsAid with a donation directly from each pair of shoes sold, my aim is to raise over one million pounds for our young Olympic athletes of the future by 2012. To be a successful athlete healthy feet are vital and yet the majority of parents are unaware of the damage that wearing ill-fitting shoes can do to the long term health of their children's backs, hips and knees.
To help increase this awareness and champion the cause of healthy feet I have developed a Foot Facts section on the Teachingzone website which are fully in line with curriculum and available for teachers to download completely free of charge. Working with SportsAid will also give ‘Twofeet schools' direct access to inspirational athletes who will visit schools to give advice on healthy menus, training schedules and generally aim to engage children with sport.
I am also passionate about supporting schools directly and understand their desperate need for additional funding. The way Twofeet works is that in return for providing the venue for the shoe fitting ‘surgery', this could be a sports hall or library, the school receives a donation from each pair of shoes sold. The range of top quality shoes we offer has
been specifically selected by qualified Shoe-fitters to suit all types of feet, for example some children need particular support around the arch of their feet and others have low or high ankle bones. Parents love it as takes the hassle of queuing with tickets for hours in high street retailers on a Saturday and as all our team are fully trained and extremely experienced they are amazed at how much they learn about their own child's feet. They are also pleased to be supporting their child's school at the same time.
All in all Twofeet is totally committed to working with the education sector to promote and assist in safeguarding the health and wellbeing of our children starting with their feet.
I would be happy to talk to schools who would like to arrange a Twofeet fitting surgery for their pupils and get involved in supporting SportsAid.
Twofeet Ltd, 67 Langham Rd, Altrincham, Cheshire, WA14 3NT
Tel: 0161 929 1394
Email: cquealy@twofeet.biz
www.twofeet.biz
