United Kingdom

We were delighted to have the opportunity to mark International Women’s Day 2023 in a practical way by running a challenge to help Scottish charity, Aid for Education, raise money for its microfinance project in Rwanda.

Using our One Big Challenge option coupled with a bespoke route complete with milestones which told the story of the Aid for Education’s inspirational work in Eastern Rwanda, the challenge participants raised £1,570 as they walked over 7,900 miles from Greenock, where the charity is based, to the heart of Africa.

The money raised will enable Aid for Education to help 15 women set up their own business which will provide each of them with the opportunity to earn money to pay for food, education and healthcare and give their children the chance of a more positive future.

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What is active travel?

Active Travel is a funding and information program set up by the UK government to support expenditure on cycling and walking infrastructure. This funding is available for local authorities in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as private businesses.

Learn more about Active Travel

Active Travel Step Challenges

Changing peoples habits on travel can be a long journey and one that should be approached from a variety of different angles. A great first step can be introducing a fun health initiative to try and reprogram how your participants think about their daily activity. Step challenges can be a great way of helping people think about increasing their daily step count by introducing the idea of personal goals and achievements. Combining this with materials to help your users ditch the solo car journeys for a walk to the nearest bus, or hopping on the bike for the daily commute, can be a great way to boost healthy living habits.

Accessibility and inclusion

At Big Team Challenge we take accessibility seriously and believe that exercise challenges should be as open and inclusive as possible to all users, regardless of their physical or mobility levels. To help make our steps challenges as inclusive as possible, we introduced our "activity conversion chart" to help users convert a variety of different physical activities into a comparable step count. These activities include yoga, aerobics, wheeling (wheelchair), pilates and much more.

Chat with one of our team members

Would you like to talk to one of our team members at Big Team Challenge about your own Active Travel initiative? Get in touch today

Walking Together This May

We're ramping up to May 2021, when we will see the UK launch it's annual National Walking Month! That means shaking off our winter routines and embracing the new spring weather. Read more about National Walking Month

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Step Challenge

One of the easiest ways to get everyone involved this year is to run a walking challenge for your family, friends and community. Walking has so many wonderful health and mental wellbeing benefits, and is one of the easiest forms of exercise to get started with.

Creating your own challenge takes minutes with Big Team Challenge's 'Challenge Creator'. This allows you to choose how many participants can join, how long the challenge lasts for, what route you can walk and much more.

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Our New Virtual Walks

To celebrate the UK and National Walking Month, we have created 4 new routes, each specifically around ones of the 4 countries.

Walk Northern Ireland

Walk Scotland

Walk England

Walk Wales

Keeping up with health initiatives

More and more often we are seeing governments adopting or updating their current health guidelines for local councils and NHS health boards to include workplace and community health challenges. Not only does it seem that the evidence is pointing towards physically healthier staff and citizens, but an increase in productivity and mental wellbeing.

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Healthy Working Lives

The Scottish government have gone one step further and produced and entire online resource and award system for employers to engage with. This website gives fantastic advice about how to not only get your staff active and moving, but all of the benefits associated with doing so.

https://www.healthyworkinglives.scot/Pages/default.aspx

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Mental Wellbeing - and the importance of getting away from your desk!

A core reason for the development of Big Team Challenge was a way of helping companies find a way to help relieve some of the stress that comes with working in an office environment. In the last 30 years there has been a dramatic shift from and active labour intensive workforce to that of a sedentary office based one. With this change comes a dangerous chance that the population as a whole will be much less active during their working lives. It's important that employers are active in getting their staff engaged in regular daily exercise, whether this is swapping their car ride for a bike, or something as simple as parking further away and getting in more steps before and after work. However, it's not solely the employees' attitudes that needs to change, employers need to think about how they are affecting the mental wellbeing of their staff too. Building policies in place to encourage regular breaks stressful activities is a great way to get started. Perhaps start with putting rules in place to enforce breaks from screens and phone calls and getting those who can to do a quick lap around the building?

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To find out how much a bespoke Work Place Challenge might cost you, use our handy Pricing Calculator for free.

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