Milestone Awarded $15,000 & Named Saskatchewan's Most Active Community

The town of Milestone worked very hard last month to achieve and log as many hours of physical activity as they could as a community for the ParticipACTION Community Better Challenge that is supported by the Government of Canada.

In total, the community logged 1.7 million physical activity minutes which put them at the top for the province and not only garnered them the title of Saskatchewan's Most Active Community but also netted them a cool $15,000 for the local project of their choosing.

"We put it out to our community to download the ParticipACTION app for the month of June and what we wanted to do was encourage all of our community members to be active for that month," told Michelle Henry, one of the organizers in Milestone. "We did what we could to promote it within our area and we were blown away with how many minutes everyone logged in the end."

With the rural area around Milestone Henry estimates that they might have a total of 750 people in the area but she stated that they only had 250 people actually download the app for the month.

This year was the first time that the town had applied for the challenge and Henry said that there were people from all age groups that took part in the month-long physical activity contest.

"Since the provincial restrictions were still in place last month we decided to hold a virtual fun run over a two-week period and that worked really well in our favour," Henry said. "I think we ended up logging about 26,000 minutes through that run and that seemed to inspire others to join in and log more of their physical activity."

The $15,000 that the town was awarded will be going towards their ongoing fundraiser for the Milestone Community Sport Court. While the funds will make a big dent in the amount needed for the court they estimate that they will still need another $70,000 to be able to fully complete the project.

"We're really just beginning this project and these funds will definitely help us to reach our goal much faster," expressed Henry. "So we haven't done much fundraising because it was difficult to do during the pandemic but now that the province is opening up we'll be able to start planning a lot more."

They plan to build the sport court beside the existing swimming pool in Milestone and it will be open 24/7 for anyone in the community to use for various sports and activities.

"We have phases for what we want to build for it," added Henry. "So in the third phase, we'd be putting lights in because it gets darker earlier at night once we get into the fall. So hopefully we can be onto that phase by then or earlier."

She wanted to make sure to thank Leanne Sjodin and Amber Moon for helping with the planning for the Community Better Challenge and wanted to express gratitude towards the whole community and anyone else that helped make their win possible.

Throughout the month of June, the senior's centre in Milestone was quite active and logged all of their minutes for the challenge and they had children from their school picking up garbage as well.

"I just think overall it's good for mental health, to start feeling better, becoming more active in our community, and it helps bring people together."

The ParticipACTION Community Better Challenge is a national physical activity initiative that encourages Canadians to get active in search of Canada's Most Active Community.

The town of Milestone is now in the running for a chance to be named Canada's Most Active Community and to receive the grand prize of $100,000.

You can keep up with Milestone Community Sport Court project by following them on Facebook and you can learn more about the ParticipACTION Community Better Challenge on the official website.