Damien is a 3-year-old in a Dover school, which has a 3-4 year pre-school English Language Learner (ELL) program. Like his classmates, he is getting this extra support so he will have success in Kindergarten. His mom saw that Damien was eating a snack from NSTEP of pita and hummus, peppers, and grated carrots. She learned these foods will help build better brains and told the teacher that she never knew that her son would eat these foods, and because she’s on a limited budget, she wasn’t buying foods that she wasn’t sure Damien would eat. Now she knows he will, so she will buy them.

In these schools, with large numbers of low-income families, many cannot afford to waste money on food their children will not eat. Learning why this food will help Damien is key for his mom in helping make the choices that will give him the healthiest food and is an opportunity that NSTEP offers to many parents.  We want parents to learn how to build better brains, so their children will be more successful in school, stay in school and graduate, a key strategy for poverty reduction.

In 2002, the World Health Organization stated that this is the first generation of children who will die before their parents of preventable nutritional diseases.  This was the inspiration for NSTEP – a grassroots school and community based program with a mission to educate and motivate children to EAT better, WALK more LIVE longer.

WHY?  1.6 million Canadian children are overweight or obese. Let’s invest in prevention of chronic disease starting at a young age.

NSTEP’s goal is for kids to have healthy habits 4 LIFE, so they don’t suffer from chronic diseases associated with being overweight or obese such as Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer and many more.

NSTEP is a registered charity that has grown into 3 different provinces, 12 different school districts impacting over 77,000 children from Jan. 2010 to June 30, 2024.

NSTEP programs include:

1. School Programs: NSTEP uses a Professional Development model (train the trainer) to build sustainability and increase NSTEP’s capacity to impact more children, teachers and parents. The knowledge transfer to teachers is key for future students. NSTEP EAT WALK LIVE is for elementary age children and NSTEP Teen Brain is for junior/senior high school populations.

2. Community Programs: Our community program, Chef on NSTEP, is a food literacy cooking class for youth. It teaches youth food preparation, nutrition, activity education, food literacy, and kitchen skills.   This complements the NSTEP school program giving children the skills to prepare healthy food for themselves and their families. Using delicious and low cost food as a vehicle for language acquisition is a powerful way of reenforcing how healthy eating builds better brains.

3.  Adult Wellness: Our Adult Wellness programs allow us to reach all adults and provide them with some key points from our Eat Walk Live Certificate through lunch and learn seminars. This information can be used to improve their wellbeing and model healthy behaviors for the children in their lives.

4.  NSTEP Certificate: The NSTEP Certificate Program was developed for post secondary students and all professionals working with children/youth. It covers nutrition, physical activity, fundamental movement, how the brain learns, and the key to a growth mindset over a fixed mindset. Participants learn, practice, and can apply this knowledge to their professional careers and become nutrition and active living advocates for the people they serve. All participants gain a deeper understanding of how healthy eating
and activity build better brains and bodies. This will have a bigger ripple effect, reaching more children and youth in rural Alberta and BC communities.

5.  Early Years Program: NSTEP understands that healthy lifestyle habits start young and starting early matters.  This program is designed for children 0-5yrs as well as parents and professionals working with children in this age category.  Supporting young children to learn, practice and apply healthy habits from infancy onwards will impact their life long health outcomes.

Join us in educating, mentoring, initiating NSTEP in more Calgary and area schools. Our full year school program costs $24.00 per student, a TWOONIE a month.  Our Chef on NSTEP program costs only $16/participant.  What an impact you could make on the future of Calgary children!

Donate on line at www.nstep.ca through Canada Helps

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We could not help children and youth become healthy without the generous financial support of all of our funders and stakeholders; from the bottom of our hearts, we THANK YOU for your support!