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Greetings!
As we reach the mid point of summer it is a great time to look forward to the next school year and start planning things for your SRTS program. In this month's newsletter there are many resources to help you come up with new ways to promote activity amongst your students and ways to further your program.
We encourage you to consider attending the SRTS National Conference coming up in August, it will be a wonderful time to connect with other people and share ideas as well as a time to learn what is new with SRTS. See the article below for more information.
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SRTS National Conference
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August 16 - 18, 2011. It's the time to energize your Safe Routes to School (SRTS) planning, strengthen your networks and elevate the vision of how we all can create healthier kids and communities.
Minneapolis, Minn. It's the place to discuss ideas, resources, projects and best practices that will help you improve the health, safety and environment of children in your state through policy, partnership and infrastructure.
Proponents and professionals. They're the people who will inspire you - and who you will inspire:
- advocates
- city planners
- community members
- elected officials
- engineers
- law enforcement
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- parent organizations
- program representatives
- public health officials
- school professionals
- state coordinators
- transportation professionals
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Join others for this dynamic conference, advance your important work and build the connections-in your schools, streets and communities.
Visit the website for more information.
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Creative Press
|  This Invention is Turning Heads and Making it Fun to be Active
A new way to promote physical activity has made its debut in the Netherlands. Kids are taken around on this pedal powered school bus that encourages kids to get moving in a new way. Read more here.Film Crew at Work in Stevensville to Make New Video to Promote Bicycle Safety
Robert Seidler along with Sharon and Roger Di Brito and others, are refilming pedestrian and bicycle safety films that they made 20 years ago for Journeys from Home Montana, a nonprofit group that educates schoolchildren around the state about traffic safety. Learn more about the project here. |
Webinars
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Upcoming Webinar -
Promoting and Selling SRTS: National Resources to Give You a Head Start July 26th (1pm ET)
Presenters:
Pam Barth, Project Manager, National Center for Safe Routes to School
Margo Pedroso, Deputy Director, Safe Routes to School National Partnership
This sixty minute webinar will showcase many of the resources available to help individuals and organizations build their case for SRTS. Pam Barth from the National Center for Safe Routes to School and Margo Pedroso, Deputy Director of the Safe Routes to School National Partnership will each highlight a number of resources the two organizations have developed to make the job of growing, promoting and selling your program easier. Some of the resources to be highlighted include interactive maps, searchable case studies, state by state fact sheets, policy updates, curriculum guides and more.
This webinar is part of the Safe Routes to School Webinar Series, developed by America Walks and the National Center for Safe Routes to School.
For more information, please contact Michelle Gulley at Mgulley@americawalks.org To register click here.
Here are some great resources for more webinars that can really help you come up with new ideas for your SRTS program and how to make your community more walkable. Add energy to your efforts with some new plans and ideas.
The Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals has a great archive library of webinars. They are the only professional membership organization for the discipline of pedestrian and bicycle transportation. Their members include leaders in engineering, planning, landscape architecture, safety, public health, Safe Routes to School and promotion. The association also welcomes academics, students and professional advocates. Their webinars can be accessed here.
The Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center (PBIC) is a national clearinghouse for information about health and safety, engineering, advocacy, education, enforcement, access, and mobility for pedestrians (including transit users) and bicyclists. The PBIC serves anyone interested in pedestrian and bicycle issues, including planners, engineers, private citizens, advocates, educators, police enforcement, and the health community. Their webinars can be accessed here.
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New Policy Guide Available
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New Local Policy Guide
Published by the Safe Routes to School National Partnership
The Safe Routes to School National Partnership is pleased to announce the release of a new publication entitled Safe Routes to School Local Policy Guide.
The Local Policy Guide was published to help local communities and schools create, enact and implement policies which will support active and healthy community environments that encourage safe walking and bicycling and physical activity by children through a "Health in All Policies" approach. The guide was made possible due to funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Public Health Association.
The Local Policy Guide highlights strategies to advance policy change and covers more than 20 policy change examples including: regional transportation plans, Complete Streets, fine based mechanisms, school bonds, crossing guards, health impact assessments, joint-use agreements, speed limits and more. The Safe Routes to School National Partnership's Local Policy Guidewas compiled through the help of more than a dozen leaders throughout the country who provided success stories and examples of local policy wins; we thank everyone who assisted for their help and contributions.
Deb Hubsmith, director of the Safe Routes to School National Partnership says, "We are excited to bring this resource to the public, as we keep hearing that communities and schools need more examples of how to enact policy changes and develop new funding streams that will create healthy environments for children."
The Safe Routes to School National Partnership plans to continue to catalog and publicize policy wins that promote Safe Routes to School. If you have an example, please email the details to Dave Cowan, program manager at dave@saferoutespartnership.org.
Safe Routes to School National Partnership The Safe Routes to School National Partnership is a fast-growing network of more than 500 organizations, agencies, schools and professional groups working to set goals, share best practices, leverage infrastructure and program funding and advance policy change to help agencies that implement Safe Routes to School. Our mission is to advocate for safe walking and bicycling to and from schools, and in daily life, to improve the health and well-being of America's children and to foster the creation of livable, sustainable communities. For more information, visit www.saferoutespartnership.org.
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Additional Funding Opportunity
| | HHS prevention funds: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced how it will allocate the 2011 prevention dollars
made available through the Affordable Care Act (health reform). Of the $750 million available for 2011, $222 million will be used to support Community Transformation Grants. These grants will be modeled after the
Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) grants, which funded communities to make policy, systems and environmental changes around obesity prevention and tobacco cessation. Grant applications are not yet available; we'll keep everyone posted.
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Sincerely,
Taylor Lonsdale
Montana Safe Routes to School
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| Important Dates | |
July 1 - Funding available for approved applications
August 1 - Final non-infrastructure reimbursement requests and 4th quarter reports must be received
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