Community Fitness and Education was founded in February 2004. Its mission is to promote healthy, active lives for children in underserved communities through high quality youth fitness programs and nutrition tips. Community Fitness and Education goal is to inspire a love of sports and physical activity that will be the foundation for healthy living, while simultaneously helping to build participants’ positive relationships, self-confidence, independence and ability to deal with adversity.
Physical activity is an essential component of a healthy childhood however far too many young children do not have adequate opportunities to engage in physical activity. Without these opportunities young children are more at risk for obesity and health related problems and in low-income communities children are more at risk for negative social behaviors that potentially have life long consequences. Sadly, many children have limited opportunities to engage in physical activity due to various reasons including cost constraints and lack or program availability both in and out of school. For example, ongoing budget cuts have led to drastic reductions in funding for both in-school and after-school programming at public schools. School districts have been forced to close or combine schools, increase class sizes, and reduce or eliminate art, music, and physical education programs.
As a result of funding cuts to PE programs, more than 21 million adolescents do not participate in PE at school, and this rate increases dramatically with age,from just 5% at age 12 to 77% at age 17. Federal guidelines suggest that children and adolescents should participate in physical activity for at least one hour every day, yet only 27% of children, ages 5-11 years, meet this recommendation.
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