JAHEL ANTONIO MONTES

Eastern manager, 60 Minute Kids Club

As with all successful businesses, collaboration is key. In a day and age where there are thousands of different options to choose from, it is about leveraging business relationships and starting the dialogue. Of course, doing it all yourself would boost your ego, but that’s why many great initiatives never fly. Like it or not, egos get in the way. It’s about providing the public with best practices and that doesn’t just come from one area. It is a collective approach that requires involvement from the public, private and political sectors.

A combination of all options would be best. Aligning with an established partner is just the beginning. Focusing on core engagement at a local level is always a great start to any initiative, and bringing together fitness instructors will promote a positive environment of likeminded individuals working towards the same goal. These options shouldn’t be seen as independent of one another, but rather in relation to one another. Solutions are far from the individual “silver bullet” ideology we once had. We should approach solutions to any problem with a “silver buckshot” approach, collaborating and sharing until a collective solution is reached.

That said, I believe getting Recess to thenext step is about prioritizing and proper selection, specifically prioritizing which options will be the best given the resources and opportunities available at the current moment. That is, if an established partner is interested, then focus on building that relationship. If not, put it aside and focus on what is generating the most business. Once priorities are set, it is a matter of selecting the teamtoensure things get done.

All great businesses need time and hard work to develop. Recess sounds like a true viable option for increasing children’s physical and healthy habits. My suggestion is to focus on bridging the gap between a kids’ game and exercise in the school setting. There is no better way to teach kids then to have fun. This would also allow for getting into schools and aligning with the curriculum as a supportive toolkit that can be easily adopted to further engage kids and their parents

Based on our experience from having more than schools partake on the Minute Kids’ Club Challenge, we have noticed that getting into schools is the biggest hurdle. It has been our collaborations and extensive list