Inverness County proud to win Participaction challenge

Canadians are familiar with the “stay fit and have fun” slogan but this is one that people in Inverness County are taking to heart.

Every year, Participaction, a national non-profit organization that promotes healthy living and physical fitness, puts on a community challenge to get people physically active. This is the fourth year Inverness County participated in the Participaction Community Challenge, with great results.

“We have gone in every year,” said Jason Calder, the community's acting manager of recreation and community wellness. “We think it's important to be the cheerleaders for physical activity in the county. It gives us an opportunity to get out there and promote physical activity and non-structured activity.”

This summer's event took place in every postcode in Inverness County being put into one bigger group. All participants could either download an app that tracked their minutes or keep track of them manually and then submit them depending on the kind of activity they were participating in.

After the numbers were tallied, Inverness County was one of four finalists from Nova Scotia. This meant the community had to submit a proposal about why it should win the Participaction Challenge. Calder then received a phone call telling him Inverness had won the challenge for 2023. Winning this year was a particularly big deal since Inverness County was a finalist last year but did not win.

“We were happy to be a finalist again this year, but also win the competition,” said Calder.

The recreation and community wellness program has not yet – as of press time for this paper - decided what to spend the $15,000 grand prize on but will be making that decision soon.

“Our goal in Inverness

County is to provide as many programs as possible and rent out equipment for low or no cost so this funding will allow us to increase our reach with programming,” said Calder.

“We are hoping to add some more items to our loan equipment,” continued Calder. “This year we have been working on adding more adaptive equipment to our loan program.”

To celebrate this achievement, a recent event was held during the youth track and field meet.

“We are so happy to be chosen as the winners. We are going to celebrate,” continued Calder.