Many children are quick to reach for sweet drinks and often bring lemonade or juice to school. As a result, children take in a lot of sugars, on average about 6 kilos a year. However, there is a much healthier and cheaper alternative: tap water! Drinking water offers numerous health benefits and can help reduce children's sugar intake.
The Share H2O program has a unique approach that utilizes the power of children's social networks. Children encourage each other to drink water in their own way. This has already led to success in many primary schools (grades 6 to 8) in the Netherlands and Aruba. Research shows that children who participated in the program drank more water and fewer sugary drinks afterwards.To measure the effectiveness of the Share H2O programme, it has a research component.
But that's not all; the program also has a research component to measure its effectiveness. The 6-week program is easy to implement in the classroom. Teachers don't need to do anything extra.
The 6-week programme consists of the following:
- Parents give prior consent for their child's participation.
- The whole class completes two questionnaires (before and after hat programme).
- A number of children from the class follow a short instruction (60 min) and recap session (15 min) on the benefits of drinking water.
- The children will independently encourage each other to drink water.
- We take school schedules into account and teachers do not have to do anything themselves.
Participation in Share H2O is a unique opportunity for schools to pay attention to children's health behaviour in a fun and natural way (free of charge). With our program, we want to contribute to a healthier future for our children.
Would you like to get started with the Share H2O programme as a school? Or more information? Then get in touch with us!
