On Wednesday 22 April, the whole world united for an online PE lesson delivered by a Polish PE teacher and organised by ISCA member V4Sport Foundation. The event was streamed via Facebook and reached over 50 thousand users. ISCA was a global partner of the event together with the Active Healthy Kids Global Alliance.

This international effort resulted in almost 58 thousand views (and counting) of the lesson streamed via Facebook, among them over 11,900 peak live viewers* from over 45 countries – from the U.S. to Eastern Australia and Japan. These numbers smashed the target of 5,000 and thus, a new world record was set – the largest online PE lesson conducted by a qualified PE teacher.

As so many sporting events have been cancelled over the past two months and physical activity as we know it has become a luxury good, online training is getting more and more popular. The goal of the Online PE World Record attempt was to draw the world’s attention to the problem of insufficient levels of physical activity and a sedentary lifestyle which, especially since the announcement of the Covid-19 pandemic, has become a problem for an increasing part of society. The World Health Organization (WHO) encourages people to stay active through the times of lockdown as a way to look after our health.

Just two weeks ago, our NowWeMOVE campaign National Coordinators, including V4Sport, met online to unite around ways of tackling the threats and opportunities they were facing as NGOs and clubs during the Covid-19 pandemic. The news of V4Sport’s online PE World Record attempt quickly set our pan-European team in motion, and the NowWeMOVE National Coordinators helped gather participants from 17 countries on the day.

The global online PE lesson found its supporters around the world. Aside from the two global partners working on a daily basis to promote physical activity – the International Sport and Culture Association (ISCA) and the Active Healthy Kids Global Alliance (AHKGA) based in Canada – numerous schools, universities, non-for-profit organisations, PE teachers and foundations joined the Facebook event and promoted it within their communities.

The World Record online PE lesson is ready to view on-demand here.

Don't let the inactivity monster (below) scare you, he is actually quite gentle and was overwhelmed by the amount of physical activity happening around him yesterday...

*The real number of active participants is much higher. The number of 11,900 does not include viewers who have accessed the PE lesson directly through the link provided (not Facebook users) and those who participated in groups of 2, 3, 4 or more using one account.

To find out more about the initiative, please contact:

Jakub Kalinowski – V4SPORT President

Ewa Anna Cichocka – PR & Communication Manager V4SPORT

https://www.facebook.com/Vision4Sport.community/