Avondvierdaagse walking festival linked to Dutch children's wellbeing
The Avondvierdaagse is an annual four-night walking festival in the Netherlands where children, parents and teachers walk about 5 kilometers each night on changing routes. Around half a million participants take part nationwide, and organizers design routes to expose kids to different neighborhoods, boost independence and encourage regular physical activity. Researchers and commentators point to the festival as one factor helping explain Dutch children's unusually high wellbeing and health, alongside broader social conditions such as low child poverty and safe public spaces. Because it combines exercise, neighborhood familiarity and peer bonding, the Avondvierdaagse offers a simple, scalable model for improving childhood physical and mental wellbeing.
No, it's because only 3.1 percent of the Dutch population live in poverty as opposed to 20 percent of the British population. The Guardian really needs to stop publishing irresponsible lifestyle crap as news. (The Avondvierdaagse is a nice tradition though.) www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
josie w.61nijmegen citizen here. the walking events are nice, but that’s only four days. I think it’s much more important that we don’t have prison walls around our schools, kids are listened to and trusted to play outside, the dutch love work/life balance, and indeed most of them are not living in poverty.
Alex P. Tobin 🎷17They also constantly manage to find 'stories' from 'over here' that are presented as huge news, while nobody here has ever heard of them. Absolutely agree that this is a nice activity, but it's comparable to saying people in Gloucestershire live long and happy lives because they roll cheese.
Luke Turner13there’s been a massive uptick in Nature Woo Therapeutic type articles in recent months - of course a walk and a bit of green can be helpful for some, but the way they cover it is annoying. Tho the number of #wildswimming #blessed articles seem to have gone down given how deadly it has been of late
The Unfinished12They also don’t actively hate & legislate against the existence of children. They give them spaces to play in, they welcome them into every day life & provide a rounded education that doesn’t leave them saddled in debt. Or is it just some silly thing they do one day a year? Who knows?!
Dr Will Ball10Reducing poverty: one weird trick - capitalists hate it!
Alex P. Tobin 🎷9And yet we're world champions... at complaining. 😀
Iain8Also I believe wholeheartedly it's because this counts as breakfast
Jonathan Portes6You should delete this. It's nonsense. The Dutch figure is about 13%(on the same basis as the UK 20% one)
Sally6The thumbnail has "Is this word you can't say why..." and I did wonder why the media have to package their twee observations on other cultures with a side of sneering.
Murali Thoppil5Are you sure? This chart from the OECD says there is not much difference for young people
Stephen Cox3Guardian being a proper grown up newspaper challenge.
Gas Station Susie3The 3.1% Dutch figure and 20% UK figure use different poverty definitions, so the comparison doesn’t work. Using the OECD’s harmonised measure, the Netherlands is at 7.4%, the UK at 11.8%, and the OECD average at 11.7%.
Lucien Ey2This One Weird Dutch Trick Might Fix Britain . . .
Christopher Mims2that seemed like a shockingly high figure so I looked it up, grimly, at least one source pegs it at a record 31%: cpag.org.uk/news/child-p...
