Ian Wright and His Unfit Kids

Ian Wright ran an interesting experiment with Unfit Kids on Channel 4. Last night was interesting because Ian Wright was looking to extend his programme throughout the local education borough and then throughout the UK. He had written to 100 businesses for support. He wanted £170,000 to be able to offer programmes for 20 schools for one year. The best offer that he received was money for 3 schools for 1 term: he decided to match that money from his own funds so that he could extend that to 2 terms.

Now, part of me thinks that there are grant-making bodies that would fall over themselves to award Ian Wright funding for such an excellent project. Including some of the one's mentioned in a Guardian piece about the topic of children's health and the hope that this series would be as influential about exercise as Jamie's School Dinners series. On the other hand, I'm surprised that UK businesses were not more forthcoming. Is it just that business doesn't want to be associated with overweight children who are on the verge of being excluded? Given some of the adverse coverage that Cadbury's had for running the schools sports equipment scheme, are other businesses gun-shy of being hypocritical when it is their computer technology that the children find more attractive than exercise, or their junk food products that children consume more than the healthier options?

Copyright 2006, Tony Plant Happystance Project