Each summer the Club partners with the Boston Youth Fund, Boston Private Industry Council, and M.L.K. Scholars program to offer teens the opportunity to serve as staff as part of the Career Prep program. Our teens help run the six-week summer program that services over 500 youth ages 5 to 18 each day. This year approximately 95 of these teen staffers get a new perk: BodiMojo.com. BodiMojo is an online wellness program that allows teens to build their confidence – in part by setting health goals. The teens also wear wireless pedometers worn on sneakers to track step counts and see their progress on BodiMojo. Mike Joyce, the VP of Programming at the Club commented: “The BodiMojo program is a great way to motivate the teen staffers to think about their own health while they are working. We’ve set up incentives for weekly step counts, including gift certificates, t-shirts and wristbands for the top 5 teen boys and girls. It’s remarkable the activity levels of some of these teens. It’s like they’re running around all day to get in their steps.” Teen staffer, Bernard Barbosa, who accumulated the most steps in week number one said “We are pretty much running after kids and play sports all day, and now we can see just how many steps that takes!” The U.S. Surgeon General recommends that American teenagers accumulate 60 minutes of moderate physical activity most days of the week – which is about 11,600 steps a day. Even greater amounts of physical activity may be necessary to stave off weight gain or for weight loss. This is particularly important as childhood obesity has reached an epidemic level, with 1 in 3 kids being overweight or obese. Teenagers, however, have a unique set of wellness challenges that arrive with a host of maturational and social changes. Among girls, for instance, physical activity declines significantly in adolescence as they drop out of organized sports and body image issues increase. Use of a wireless pedometer may be an innovative solution to make girls more aware of their activity levels, especially since they can check their goals and stats online or on their cell phones. In fact, the BodiMojo has been shown in a controlled study to increase body confidence in girls through use of interactive body image tools and quizzes. Teen boys, on the other hand, connect to the competitive nature of tracking steps and are more inclined to compare their numbers to the other guys.
“Collaborating with the Boys & Girls Club of Dorchester is a great opportunity to evaluate the BodiMojo in a real life setting and give tools to the program mentors. Our goal is to maximize technology for positive behavior change: We meet teenagers where they’re at in their digital playground. Basically, we get teens online to go offline. It’s not easy to make health cool. But we do!” said BodiMojo founder, Tara Cousineau, Ph.D., who is a clinical psychologist specializing in behavior change. Our goal is to continue the program into the Fall semester and to include younger members along with teens.
Fresh Films Project Kicks off new Film & Video Program
Thanks to a three-year grant from the Taco Bell Foundation, in partnership with the Mark Wahlberg Youth Foundation, construction is set to begin on space to house our new Film & Video program, a new addition which is expected to complement our existing Music Clubhouse and Fine Arts programming. To help kick-off the program, this past week a group of six teens traveled to the greater Philadelphia area to take part in the Fresh Films project. Our members took part in training and followed that up by serving as the crew on a feature film being created on-site. Our members handled audio, filming and set set-up as part of their week. These members will now return home to begin working on their first project, the creation of a P.S.A. that will focus on the importance of gaining a High School diploma. For more information on the Film program for teens please contact Mike Joyce at ext. 2110.
Congratulations to the following members of the Marr-lin Swim Team who helped propel the Metro team in the Bay State Games to their first state-wide championship in the 35 years the games have been taking place: Joseph Woods, Emily Mischler, Martin Chomicki, Rachel O’Driscoll, Shane Kelly, Lauren Hernandez, Olivia Fenton and Emily Suslowicz. Our members scored well in the preliminaries held at Regis College and followed that up with top performances in the finals held at Harvard University. The Bay State Games competition is an extension of our Summer Swim Team which practices three nights a week and will conclude with a meet and family BBQ on 8/9. For more information on the Marr-lin Swim Team please contact Aquatic Director, Aquiles Gomes at 617-288-7120, ext. 2220.
