Young Ambassadors

The Healthier Choices Canberra Young Ambassadors program will launch in 2022.

What is the Young Ambassadors Program?

Sport is a big part of Australian  culture and has the potential to influence hundreds of thousands of our children. In Canberra alone, over 50,000 children play organised sport outside of school.  Young players often look up to senior players within their clubs or codes as role models. The Healthier Choices Canberra Young Ambassadors program harnesses the power of young people and role  modelling to promote healthier behaviours within the sporting environment.

The program was designed with input from young athletes aged 13-18 years across five sporting codes. We wanted to understand what factors are most important to young athletes when it comes to health, and how they could promote healthier behaviours in their sporting environment.

How does it work?

Healthier Choices Canberra works with State Sporting Organisations to identify potential Young Ambassadors, aged 13-18 years within their sporting code, and supports them to champion healthier behaviours within their sporting environment. This may be as simple as a Young Ambassador promoting water as the best drink at training and on game day, in newsletters and on a club’s website or social media profile.

Young athletes told us that nutrition, sleep and mental health are key for their wellbeing. Healthier Choices Canberra will work with each sporting code and their Young Ambassador(s) to identify the key area they want to influence within their code, and support them to develop strategies for impact.