IOC and WHO launches 'Let's Move' Campaign -written by Nitisha Gurjar (BA English Hons.)

For Olympic Day, the IOC and WHO launched the ‘Let’s Move’ campaign to inspire people towards better health. 

 

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has unveiled a brand-new worldwide effort to encourage and facilitate daily movement throughout the world. Let's Move, an initiative spearheaded by Olympians and developed in partnership with WHO will launch on Olympic Day, June 23, 2023, with a call to action to schedule daily movement for improved health.

 

Though the world is changing more quickly than ever, people are getting older physically. Over 80% of young people and one in four adults, according to research, do not engage in the required minimum levels of activity for good health (WHO, 2022). One of the most frequent excuses stated for not being able to accomplish this aim is not having enough time in the day. Nevertheless, even only 30 minutes a day of exercise has a positive impact on the hearts, bodies, and minds.

 

The Olympic Movement will promote and encourage individuals to incorporate moving in any way, anyplace, into their daily lives on June 23, 2023. This includes a digital invitation from Olympians Allyson Felix, Pau Gasol, PV Sindhu, and Yusra Mardini, to schedule 30 minutes to move with them on this day and to join the Let's Move Olympic Day digital workout from anywhere in the world, with the hope of making this a daily habit.

 

"On Olympic Day, we celebrate the Olympic Movement's vision to use sport to improve the world," said OC President Thomas Bach. Sport helps to maintain a healthy, strong mind and body. Sport unites us and inspires us to constantly give our best effort. It also stimulates us to dream and makes us happy. We are promoting the advantages sport brings for both physical and mental health this year in collaboration with the WHO. Every day, we want to motivate the world to move more. The low-cost, high-impact strategy for resilient communities, healthy bodies, and healthy minds is sport and physical activity.

 

The Olympic Movement has a special capacity to harness the potential of  increased physical activity via sport for enhancing public health, according to Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the WHO . Olympians serve as role models for others, inspiring them to participate in sports and get the health advantages of exercise. In order to encourage and motivate people to exercise more for better health, the Let's Exercise initiative—which is sponsored by the WHO—combines the influence of the Olympics and WHO recommendations for physical activity.

 

Olympic hosts from the past and the future will support the campaign by urging residents to get active in their neighborhoods. Recognizing the numerous advantages of daily exercise for both physical and mental health, Paris 2024 (along with the French Ministry of National Education and Youth, the Ministry of Sport, and the Olympic and Paralympic Games) has already incorporated 30 minutes of physical activity into the school day over the past 12 months.

 

The National Olympic Committees (NOCs) and the larger Olympic Movement are organizing over 131 mass participation events and digital activations throughout the globe that will give everyone the chance to move together on Olympic Day.

 

The IOC has launched a number of programs, the first of which is Let's Move on Olympic Day, with the goal of encouraging and promoting global movement. It will directly support the Olympism365 priority area of "Sport, Health and Active Communities," which is concerned with ensuring that more people, from a wider range of backgrounds, can benefit from physical exercise and sport.