Employees from Novo Nordisk Canada are changing diabetes by singing and dancing with more than 15,000 children.

The Canadian affiliate is helping to educate kids about how proper food and physical activity can prevent diseases like type 2 diabetes and put them on the right track to a healthy lifestyle. This year, 29 Novo Nordisk Canada employees helped deliver ‘Everyone Jump – Kids Changing Diabetes’, a school-based programme that includes a concert and an educational challenge.

Valuable resources
The programme is based on Ophea's (Ontario Physical and Health Education Association) Everyone Jump resource, a curriculum-based learning guide for students in grades 4 to 6 accompanied by a CD of songs about diabetes and healthy living. Novo Nordisk has helped Ophea leverage this programme in 100 schools across Canada by providing employee time and resources to deliver a fun interactive concert using the existing programme CD and an educational challenge where schoolchildren are asked to submit a written paragraph, song lyrics, or a poster about diabetes.

Change Champions
To help spread the word about healthy living, this year Novo Nordisk Canada sponsored five child ambassadors, dubbed ‘Change Champions’ who went to schools and conducted media interviews about healthy habits. The employees also developed two articles about diabetes based on the curriculum and the concerts for distribution to community newspapers.

Reaching thousands of children
The programme reached a staggering 15,000 children in 100 schools in four Canadian provinces. The concert tour and educational challenge took place over a six week period from 25 September to 17 November. The Change Champions ambassadors told Novo Nordisk Canada what a great opportunity it was to share what they had already learned through the programme, and their parents could see the changes in their kids.