Students from Wyndham Vale Primary School let their shoes do the talking on Friday morning when they participated in National Walk Safely to School Day.
Led by the school’s three junior active travel leaders Anahat, Aiden, and Helen, students walked, cycled and scooted to school on May 10 and were rewarded with active travel tokens for doing so.
With the tokens, the students were able to choose from a pool of prizes consisting of colourful shoelaces, zipper pulls designed by students, badges, stickers and wrist bands.
Anahat, Aiden and Helen were chosen last year to be junior active travel leaders and
since then have worked with the school and Wyndham council to encourage other students to actively travel to school each day through small incentives on special days such as National Walk Safely to School Day and Ride2School Day.
Helen said her favourite part of being an active travel leader was helping others get more active.
“Getting active each day is a good habit to have because it’s healthier, it makes you happier, it reduces traffic around the school area and, having clearly marked paths, makes it safer to walk to school,” she said.
Aiden said since taking on the role he’d begun to notice a change in the way his classmates were getting to school.
“Lately I have seen a lot more kids riding their bikes around the school and also a declining number of cars. There are more parking spots around the school.”
Anahat said he loved demonstrating the benefits of active travel as well as experiencing them himself.
“Now everyday I ride my bike to school and home and on the weekends. Happiness is not ready-made. It comes from your actions.”
Cade Lucas.
