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The art of doing

Abstract The purpose of the Business Model Template (BMT) is to help you turn your idea into a viable project or organization. To illustrate this, two real-life case studies are offered in this chapter. Firstly, the KipCaravan project, which is a mobile home—a caravan—for chickens. It involves low-scale egg production in several locations. Secondly, the Sun at School NSV2 project in the city of Nijmegen. For both projects you will find a step-by-step description of the different routes followed. As you will see, the interpretation of the building blocks is different for every project and there is no best order in which to stack the building blocks. Bear in mind that both projects are still up and running successfully at the time of writing. These examples are shown in simplified versions and with the benefit of hindsight, of course. Perhaps the essence of doing business is having the courage to start without a ready-made recipe.

Short horror fiction: Thorn Cathedral.

Active Living: development and quasi-experimental evaluation of a school-centered physical activity intervention for primary school children

Background: The worldwide increase in the rates of childhood overweight and physical inactivity requires successful prevention and intervention programs for children. The aim of the Active Living project is to increase physical activity and decrease sedentary behavior of Dutch primary school children by developing and implementing tailored, multicomponent interventions at and around schools. Methods/design: In this project, school-centered interventions have been developed at 10 schools in the south of the Netherlands, using a combined top-down and bottom-up approach in which a research unit and a practice unit continuously interact. The interventions consist of a combination of physical and social interventions tailored to local needs of intervention schools. The process and short- and long-term effectiveness of the interventions will be evaluated using a quasi-experimental study design in which 10 intervention schools are matched with 10 control schools. Baseline and follow-up measurements (after 12 and 24 months) have been conducted in grades 6 and 7 and included accelerometry, GPS, and questionnaires. Primary outcome of the Active Living study is the change in physical activity levels, i.e. sedentary behavior (SB), light physical activity (LPA), moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), and counts-per-minute (CPM). Multilevel regression analyses will be used to assess the effectiveness of isolated and combined physical and social interventions on children’s PA levels. Discussion: The current intervention study is unique in its combined approach of physical and social environmental PA interventions both at school(yard)s as well as in the local neighborhood around the schools. The strength of the study lies in the quasi-experimental design including objective measurement techniques, i.e. accelerometry and GPS, combined with more subjective techniques, i.e. questionnaires, implementation logbooks, and neighborhood observations. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanned/

Van PO naar VO

Naarmate leerlingen ouder worden, lijkt de fysieke activiteit van leerlingen af te nemen. Dit terwijl het aantal gereguleerde uren lichamelijke opvoeding toeneemt in het voortgezet onderwijs (VO) ten opzichte van het primair onderwijs (PO). De veranderde omgeving waaraan VO-leerlingen worden blootgesteld lijkt een belangrijke factor in de verklaring van de teruggang. Hoe dit precies zit, is tot op heden echter weinig over bekend. Inzicht krijgen in hoe en waar deze teruggang lijkt plaats te vinden, helpt daarom om het probleem gericht(er) te kunnen aanpakken en om LO’ers beter in staat te stellen hierin een belangrijke bijdrage aan te leveren.

Does stimulating physical activity affect school performance?

This paper investigates whether encouraging children to become more physically active in their everyday life affects their primary school performance. We use data from a field quasi‐experiment called the Active Living Program, which aimed to increase active modes of transportation to school and active play among 8‐ to 12‐year‐olds living in low socioeconomic status (SES) areas in the Netherlands. Difference‐in‐differences estimations reveal that while the interventions increase time spent on physical activity during school hours, they negatively affect school performance, especially among the worst‐performing students. Further analyses reveal that increased restlessness during instruction time is a potential mechanism for this negative effect. Our results suggest that the commonly found positive effects of exercising or participating in sports on educational outcomes may not be generalizable to physical activity in everyday life. Policymakers and educators who seek to increase physical activity in everyday life need to weigh the health and well‐being benefits against the probability of increasing inequality in school performance.

Playing outdoors: What do children do, where and with whom?

There is an increasing interest in outdoor play, both in research and in policy. However, in (re)designing, planning and managing the public space, there is still limited attention for children’s actual playing behavior. A lot of urban planning decisions are based on adults’ perceptions of children’s playing behavior and focus on formal play spaces, rather than on their actual behavior and on other, more informal, play places children might also use. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore where children play outdoors, with whom and what kind of activities they are performing there. Between February 2022 and March 2023 1,127 – mainly primary school - children were systematically observed after school in three post-war residential districts in three cities in The Netherlands. The majority of the children were between 5-8 years old (50%). Above the age of 8 years, substantially more boys (70%) than girls (30%) were playing outdoors. Most of the children (79%) were playing with other children, 8% were playing alone. The playground was the most popular play space (36% of the observed children were playing there), followed by public sports fields (14%) and sidewalks (13%). With respect to the type of activities, relaxing (21%) was the most common activity, followed by ball sports (14%), climbing or hanging (11%), swinging (10%), and riding on wheels (9%). This study showed differences in play behavior by gender, age, district and play space and stress the need for a broader definition of play, and for focusing on formal as well as informal play spaces.