New Strategic Plan Will Shape Our Future

The entire PE4life staff has been engaged this summer in a planning exercise that will have far-reaching effects upon the organization. Earlier this year, key executives from the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation (GKCCF), one of the nation's premiere community foundations, joined us at a strategic planning retreat.

The GKCCF's Jan Kreamer and Dalene Bradford guided us through a powerful strategic planning process. The timing was perfect. PE4life recently turned five years old. Over those five years, we've enjoyed some tremendous successes and positively impacted thousands of young lives. Nevertheless, we've reached a level of maturity where we need to take a long look at our direction for the next five years and determine how we can reach the most children, teachers, parents, health care professionals, and other physical education advocates.

We have defined new goals, strategies and tactics in several areas, perhaps most importantly, in the area of education and training. We currently have three PE4life Institutes: our first Institute in Naperville, Illinois and two others in Grundy Center, Iowa and Titusville, Pennsylvania. I'm excited to let you know that we will soon announce three additional PE4life Institutes, and we will continue to expand with 5 or more new Institute sites each year until we have one PE4life Institute in each of our 50 states by 2010. Our projections show approximately 11,000 school districts with active PE4life Programs by that date. That means PE4life will have positively impacted as many as 34 million students.

To make this vision a reality, we'll need your help. If you haven't already joined PE4life, please sign up today. Together, we can unleash a physical education health and fitness movement throughout our nation's schools. Our children and our nation will be much the better for it!