PROJECT FIT INTERNATIONAL
The lifestyle we live today is very different from what it was decades or even a few years ago. New technologies have significantly changed our everyday functioning, receiving and giving information, learning and thinking. However, one thing has remained the same - our human body, which needs movement to function successfully. Yet, neither the younger nor the older generations move enough, even though science has already proven that movement has positive effects both on our body as well as the brain and through it on our learning and thinking processes. Regular physical activity protects us from chronic non-communicable disease (CND), strengthens bones and muscles, maintains psychophysical and functional abilities of the body, helps relieve stress and depression as well as improves self-confidence and self-image. To be healthy, children need at least one hour of continuous physical activity daily and an active lifestyle during childhood has positive effects on a person's lifestyle later in life.
In accordance with the guidelines of the World Health Organisation and in line with scientific discoveries, Barbara Konda, B.Sc in Exercise Physiology, developed the Fit International project, which has become recognised, in the last twenty years, as a model of good teaching practices in Slovenia as well as internationally. The project integrates numerous experiences of distinguished experts and its main goal is to promote physical activity amongst young people and offer new innovative teaching strategies. These are nowadays crucial to successful lifelong learning on all levels of education. Fit International focuses on encouraging physical activity as the main activity of a healthy lifestyle in the broadest sense of the word, as well as the development of new guidelines to teaching children and adolescents in the contemporary world of digitalization.
Fit International covers the following areas: physical activity and sport (the role of physical activity in the prevention of disease and their treatment), education (Fit pedagogy – new and innovative ways of teaching and learning), physiology, neuroscience and educational neuroscience.
Fit International programmes and contents have been integrated into regular teaching practices of 156 participating schools and preschools. Over 5,000 teachers, sport educators, health-care workers and others have attended seminars since 1999. Fit International works with numerous national and foreign institutions, foreign experts in the fields of medicine, physiology, neuroscience and educational neuroscience.
Fit international and its contents and programmes are recognised as innovative, motivational, of good quality and presented by a highly educated team of experts dedicated to their work. It includes training of teachers, parents, health-care workers and other professionals. Through the years, they have become respected not only in the eyes of children, teachers and parents but the general public. At the same time, Fit International has provided the parents with evidences that teachers trained in Fit pedagogy carry out high quality teaching practices, which include both, learning and movement.