WELCOME to the 5x50 Charity Challenge
Change Habits, Choose Active, Love It!
What is 5x50? – A fun challenge designed to establish exercise habits for a lifetime. Since 2012, more than 15000, challengers representing 43 countries have participated in three challenges raising more than £210,000 for charities.
For the 2014 challenge, due to feedback from some of our challengers, we extended the
challenge to encompass the younger members of our community, believing that habits formed in younger years pave the way for healthy and happier later lives. One of the schools that took part, Gairloch High School, fully embraced the challenge and had the pupils and staff participating in a variety of activities, including pony trekking, mountain biking, kayaking, along with the general walking, running and cycling. They had over 40 pupils/staff who completed the challenge and raised over £1,600 for their school funds whilst covering 14,500 kilometres during the 50 days.
In addition 50 primary school pupils from a School in Russia signed up to platform E where they built up from 5 mins of activity a day to 50 minutes. This was inspired by there teacher, Vincent Weightman, originally from Scotland and always putting himself through challenges. Vincent told us “You’re never too old” is a saying I have been reminded of, all too often recently. While struggling through the Moscow marathon, I watched a 70 year old man in denim shorts and bare feet cruise through the42.195km as if he’d just nipped across the beach to buy an ice cream. Soon after this, I marched slowly to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro where I was joined by a sixty-something Danish couple whose only observation following the gruelling 7 hour night hike to the summit, was that they’d perhaps climbed too quickly as they’d beaten the African sunrise. I have been inspired by the passion and sense of adventure that people around me have displayed and hope that by challenging myself, my friends and the youngest half of the British International School in Moscow, 5x50 can be the start of something exciting for us all and we can prove that in fact, “You’re never too young!”
Between the ages of five and 18, children and young people establish behaviour patterns that have important implications for their immediate and long-term health and wellbeing. The 50 days of fit via the 5x50 challenge is a perfect way to start to introduce your pupils, staff and even parents to physical activity, making it part of their everyday routine and forming habits for a lifetime.
Research demonstrates that habits are formed after 21 consecutive days. Our Challenge builds on this research, offering a 50-day programme that will reaffirm the key messages of the Curriculum for Excellence – Learning in Health and Wellbeing.
As stated in the Curriculum for Excellence Document, learning through health and wellbeing enables children and young people to:
- MAKE informed decisions in order to improve their mental, emotional, social and physical wellbeing
- EXPERIENCE challenge and enjoyment
- EXPERIENCE positive aspects of healthy living and activity for themselves
- APPLY their mental, emotional, social and physical skills to pursue a healthy lifestyle
- MAKE a successful move to the next stage of education or work
- ESTABLISH a pattern of health and wellbeing which will be sustained into adult life, and which will help to promote the health and wellbeing of the next generation of Scottish children
Put simply, helping our children and young people to establish and maintain a commitment to physical activity into adulthood will reduce the risk of morbidity and mortality from chronic diseases later in life.
The 5x50 challenge links perfectly with the Government's 60 minutes of activity a day message and the 50 days to fit can be rewarding and fun, as well as being flexible. Whether it’s doing a different activity for 50 days – skipping, playing chase, hide-and-seek – the hardest part of the challenge will be deciding on what the 50 physical activities will be. Why not ask the school community for suggestions?
How you choose to complete the challenge is up to the school. Here are just some suggestions:
- The challenge can be split among the school population, depending on school capacity, and the aim is for five groups of five people from each class to cover one kilometre each day for the 50 days and then they hand the baton to someone else in the school to complete the next day’s mileage.
- OR on each of the 50 days, encourage pupils, along with staff and perhaps parents, to go on a treasure hunt, on which they have to find an item, but with various activities along the walk, covering a distance of 1-5k each day or perhaps collect 50x50 pence pieces – one a day for 50 days!
- What would be exciting and so rewarding for the school’s community is the challenge incorporating the whole of the school’s community staff, pupils and parents as teams and perhaps competing against other schools in your local area. The end goal is to develop a healthy habit and demonstrate how easy and beneficial it is to be physically active. Not forgetting that you can raise funds for the school or any other cause during the challenge.
Please read the inspiring story from Gairloch High School at the end of this document.
How do you get involved?
Visit 5x50.org and register your school. A £5 fee registers the whole school and anyone else under 16. You can have as many challengers taking part in the challenge as you want.
75% of the Registration Fee is passed on to our five chosen charities. More details of our supported charities and how your fee is helping our supported can be viewed here . The remainder of the fee is for the 5x50 charity to assist in improving the challenge and to help it grow and develop.
Once registered, your nominated person (usually the person who registers the school) will have access to our online community, where they will be able to log all the activity enjoyed by your school community each day, see the distance travelled and have the ability to share this on your social media platforms.
Of course, you may have pupils in your school who are over the age of 16 and wish to register for the Challenge independently or as part of a different team. In this instance, registration and team set up can be done in the usual way by creating an account, paying the £5 suggested donation and setting up a team for others to join as they register. We’re here to help with any registration difficulties, please email with any sign up queries.
Promotional cards and posters are downloadable from our website, where and when possible, invitations will be extended to your school to join local events that you can attend as part of the challenge activities.
If you would like further information or have any questions, please review our FAQs on our
website or email
THANK YOU & GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR CHALLENGE.
Gairloch High School 5x50 team
The Gairloch High School 5x50 team was set up to encourage as many youngsters as possible to be more active and to record their activity. The pupils were also asked to get sponsored for their efforts and the money raised has been put towards the renovation of the school’s outdoor learning facility at Slattadale beside Loch Maree.
The Activity Tourism class helped to organise the initiative. They met with Raymond Wallace, who was really helpful and enthusiastic, and told the boys more about the 5x50 challenge and how to promote the activity in the High School. The boys in the class gave a presentation to the whole school and distributed activity log sheets and sponsor forms that they had designed. They were given 5x50 hoodies and all pupils who signed up were given a wrist band to promote the challenge. The initial response in the school was fantastic. As an added incentive we purchased 3 more hoodies for prizes for those who raised the most money and completed the most kilometres. The school team was also promoted in the local paper and the Ross-shire Journal.
As the challenge took place during the Easter holidays and study leave for Senior pupils it was decided to set up a Facebook page to encourage participants to share their stories and pictures and to provide motivation. A few of the S2 pupils set up a cycling group and had great fun biking to the beach and playing in the dunes. They managed to organise themselves to have a BBQ one fine evening and have continued with their outings since the challenge finished.
When the 50 days were over, the job of collecting log sheets and sponsorship began. This was a huge job. Unfortunately the Activity Tourism pupils were on study leave for their exams so I had to step in, but with help from Register teachers, and the ladies in the school office who dealt with the money, we got everything collated. We were thrilled to find that 42 pupils and staff had completed activity sheets for the challenge with a grand total of 14,531km and £1600 of sponsorship raised.
Our 5x50 Hoodie winners were Cameron, most sponsorship; Lewis, most kilometres recorded; and, Sara, for the best log sheet with detailed activities and comments for all 50 days.
5x50 2015, GHS now has two pupils, Sara (S3) and Innis (S6), who are Sport Scotland Young Ambassadors and whose role it is to promote sporting activity in the school and community. They will carry out this role with support from the school’s Active Schools Co-ordinator and PE teachers. I will be encouraging them to enter a school team for the 5x50 next year.
I would like to thank Ray and the rest of the 5x50 team for their enthusiasm and support in getting the GHS 5x50 team up and running. For now, the sun is shining and I’m off for a run!
Fiona Johnston
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