Bowling Green, VA (February 23, 2023) – Caroline County Public Schools has partnered with the Rev Your Bev campaign, an obesity prevention initiative of the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth (VFHY), to encourage its school community to drink more water during the school day and recognize the academic and health benefits of making this choice. Caroline County Public Schools values the health and well-being of its students and staff, and for this reason, updated its school wellness policy in December 2022 with comprehensive language that increases water access and promotion to align with Rev Your Bev’s best practices. The updated wellness policy recognizes water as an essential nutrient and ensures that students not only have access to water during the school day but before and after school as well.
To celebrate its updated School Wellness Policy and the continued healthy learning environment it provides its students and staff, Caroline County Public Schools hosted a celebratory event yesterday, February 22, 2023. During the event, students and staff participated in fun water-related activities and wrote Thank You messages, thanking Caroline County Public Schools for their efforts to promote healthy hydration and empower their school community to make drinking water a habit. Students like Anthony Lanning at Caroline High School are appreciative, sharing “I would like to thank the school board and all of the people involved in updating the wellness policy that I and Y Street advocated for. I would love to share that thanks to this wellness policy update we are now going to be able to have better access and awareness of the benefits of drinking water and how it can help with your health”. The Rev Your Bev campaign also donated and distributed 4,218 water bottles to support the division in implementing its policy.
Caroline County Public Schools is excited about its updated wellness policy and the extraordinary steps they are taking to increase water consumption and ensure all students have an opportunity to be healthy and successful. Mr. Jeff Wick, Coordinator of Safety and Compliance shared that, “CCPS recognizes the importance of drinking water for hydration as well as student and staff health, and we are honored to partner with Y-Street to not only promote the benefits of drinking water to all of our K-12 students but also to provide them with a valuable resource to do so via its Rev Your Bev campaign. This is a valuable partnership that we look forward to continuing for many years.”
With Caroline County Public Schools partnering with Rev Your Bev and joining the growing list of divisions with comprehensive wellness policies that place an emphasis on water access and promotion, more Virginia students now have more access to water throughout the school day.
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About the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth (VFHY)
Established in 1999 by the Virginia General Assembly, the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth empowers Virginia’s youth to make healthy choices by reducing and preventing youth tobacco and nicotine use, substance use, and childhood obesity.
VFHY takes a comprehensive approach to prevention work that includes reaching about 50,000 children each year through classroom-based prevention programs in public schools, after-school programs, community centers, daycares, and prevention programs across the state. VFHY’s award-winning marketing campaigns deliver prevention messaging to more than 500,000 children annually. In addition, VFHY’s research program provides scientific insight into methods to effectively reduce tobacco use. Since 2002, VFHY has funded 40 large research projects at universities throughout Virginia. For more information, visit www.vfhy.org.
