GFTAC Mission Statement
The mission of the Greater Fort Town Area Charity is to support Youth Driven Initiatives that provide Active Living and Outdoor Appreciation.
The following is a copy of our Constitution & by-laws.
The following is a copy of the Policies & Procedures for the Youth Movement Project.
If you would like to become a Trustee, please complete the Application for Trustee Membership form.
If you would like to support us as a Friend of the Greater Fort Town Area Charity, general membership is open at each Special General Meeting. Please complete the following online form. The cost of membership is $10. We hope to see you at our meetings. Help us to make this an event to remember and to support local youth programs and organizations.
Definitions:
Youth Driven Initiatives, as it applies to programs for older youth (10-17) is based on a simple innovation: involving young people in running their own initiatives (e.g., involving youth in program and organizational decisions). Scholars have identified several rationales for engaging youth in organizational governance and decision-making, including:
- Promoting social justice through youth representation
- Building civil society by creating committed citizens
- Fostering youth leadership to work in broader democratic movements on issues (e.g., racial justice)
- Promoting youth development through skill building
Active Living is a growing field that emerged from the early work of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) with the release of the Surgeon’s General Report on Physical Activity and Health in 1996. Active Living is a way of life that integrates physical activity into your everyday routines. There are three types of physical exercises that a person can do to keep active: endurance flexibility, and strength activities. In Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada supported the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology (CSEP) to review the Canada's Physical Activity Guides,[12] which were updated and replaced with the Get Active Tip Sheets.[13] The Get Active Tip Sheets are broken down into 4 age categories (5-11, 12-17, 18-64 and 65 & older).
The Get Active Tip Sheets recommend that children aged 5–11 and youth aged 12–17 should participate in at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity each day. The recommendation for adults 18-64 and for older adults 65 years and older is at least 2.5 hours of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week. These minutes do not all need to be done at the same time, but the recommendation is a minimum of 10 minutes at a time.
Outdoor Appreciation refers to leisure pursuits engaged in the outdoors with the purposes for physical and social rewards that goal-directed activity instills in individuals or groups and pleasurable appreciation of the surrounding nature.
