Erica Lynn Lares
Staff Writer
The increasing childhood obesity epidemic was the impetus for communications major Cheryl Regan’s senior project.
Regan started her own campaign to promote a healthy lifestyle for children.
“Play to Live” encourages children and their parents to partake in healthy living.
“I chose this project because I feel that more kids are inside after school playing video games, and I wanted to make them want to go outside and play,” Regan said.
Regan created a website, playtoliveonline.com, where she gives tips to parents and children on how to live a healthy lifestyle.
The website consists of healthy recipes for parents to be able to offer their children healthier alternatives when relating to nutrition and feeding them snacks after school.
Activities and games can also be found on the website that encourage children to go out and be active.
“The website ‘Play to Live’ is great,” Charlotte Randall, a Chino Hills resident, said.
“With the busy and hectic schedules that us parents and grandparents have, it is great to have an outlet that makes it easy to help maintain my granddaughter’s health,” Randall said.
“I found out about the website by fliers that Cheryl posted at my granddaughter’s dance studio,” Randall said.
“By having this website at my access, I have realized the difference in the choices that I am making for my granddaughter.
“My favorite part of the website is the healthy recipes. It gives me great ideas on what to feed my granddaughter, and this is important because the choices we make now can have a big affect on their health in the future,” Randall said.
Regan not only promoted her campaign through her website, but also by holding various events.
This included going to a local elementary school and encouraging the students to be healthy by playing games, handing out healthy snacks and having a minor league baseball player talk about the importance of eating healthy and being active.
“Going to the school event was a positive experience,” Regan said. “The kids were well behaved and really excited that I was there. I feel that they learned a lot and had a lot of fun.”
Through educating parents and children on the importance of having a healthy life style at a young age, Regan is making a difference in her community and in the lives of others for a while.
“The process of the project was a lot better and easier than I thought it would be,” Regan said. “In the beginning I was stressed because I knew it was going to be a lot of work, but in the end I was able to reach out to a lot of people and change the minds of the children and the parents.”
“Cheryl has made a steady progress the entire semester, she has a creative design that is completely her own, it is an interesting project, and completely her own doing,” said Maia Kinsinger, associate professor of communications and Regan’s senior project adviser.
Erica Lynn Lares can be reached at erica.lares@laverne.edu.
