This Is Why We Run.....

It's both simple and complex....the members of the run committee love to run!! We love to be outside and be active with our children, we want them to run! We want you to run, or walk and have an active lifestyle.  At BELA, Health & Wellness is one of our foundational building blocks and one of our core values! We actively promote and model a healthy lifestyle to our students on a daily basis.  And, we want you to have fun!

We also NEED to increase awareness of the importance of early learning & early literacy!! We want you to read to your children, we want them to love to read! We want them to carry their early literacy skills with them as they move onto a successful school career. We don't just want to  support the children in our community, we NEED to!

30.19% of children in Brooks & Newell County are experiencing great difficulty in one or more of the 5 early learning developmental domains, supporting early literacy development.

(ECMap Project Alberta Education, Spring 2013)

 This is higher than the provincial average. EDMap results 2009-2012 indicate that 26.96% of children in Alberta are experiencing Great Difficulty in at least one of the 5 Developmental Domains.

 (EDMap Project, Winter, 2013)

For an in-depth look at the 5 developmental domains see the chart here. 

It is essential that we work as a community to better the statistics on the development of our children in Brooks & area. We use the money raised by the run to buy books and literacy materials and to invest in the continued learning of our staff in the area of early literacy. This allows us to continue focusing on literacy within our school and better support our students as they move towards Kindergarten.

This event hosted over 130 participants and with the positive feedback received we know those numbers will be even stronger next year. Close to $2000.00 was raised and we were also able to donate 2 bags of books each to BCIS &  the Brooks Women's Shelter- Cantara Safe House!

The Run For Reading would not be possible without our partners, Enerplus, Gord's Running Store, Pop Up Photo Booths & Frontier Signworks & our amazing team of volunteers! We also received donations of goods or services from Heritage Foods, Duffy's Fun Center, Alberta Health Services, the City of Brooks, The Pita Pit, League Pipeline, Freson Brothers, Water Pure & Simple, BRK Equipment Rentals, SPEC , the Early Childhood Development Coalition, JD Hogg Consulting, and our awesome face painters Celina & Amber Everett

 Thank you to all who participated! You are helping us support literacy in our school & community and we hope you had fun doing it!!

- CP