About 50 students of Apii Arorangi participated in a three-week pilot healthy living programme organised by the Cook Islands Rugby Union, which entailed progressive activity built into a tournament.

The goal of the programme was to promote a healthy lifestyle among the young generation of the Cook Islands and raise awareness of the increasing prevalence of non-communicable diseases in the country.

In an interview with Cook Islands News, CIRU development manager Ben Koteka explained that the first week of the tournament was a good start, during which they were able to talk to the children about making healthy choices.

Koteka added that one of the key objectives of this programme was looking for ways in which they can help reduce the rising rate of NCDs in the country.

Nearly half of Cook Islands residents have non-communicable diseases (NCDs), according to the Ministry of Health’s National-Health-Information-Bulletin-2021-2023 report on NCDs.

Koteka said: “If you look at those stats there, I think 74 per cent deaths in the Cook Islands are NCD related, but the one that probably hit hard at home for a lot of us is 36 per cent of those deaths are under the age of 60 years.”

“For example, if I lined up three boys on this side, and three girls on that side, I get the kids to say, hey, one of you kids in your group of three will not reach to the age of 60, according to this statistic, because 36 per cent deaths are under the age of 60 and that’s quite true and relevant.

“A lot of them do have family members who have passed away just too young, below the age of 60, and I believe that figure is getting worse.

“So I guess we see education and awareness as being one of the key ways of just getting our students to understand the decisions that they do make in terms of eating, the reasons why we need to be drinking more water as opposed to fizzies, eating more fresh fruits and veggies as opposed to a lot of the processed foods in our war against NCDs.”

Cook Islands Rugby Development manager Ben Koteka with Apii Arorangi Primary students. 24121123

The programme eyed total inclusion of everyone at school. Over the past few weeks, the organisers held classroom sessions with Year 3, 4, 5 and Year 6 students.

A tournament was held on Wednesday, where Koteka acknowledged final-year Tereora College students who volunteered to assist with refereeing.

Cook Islands Rugby Union sees the opportunity of using sport as a vehicle to promote healthy living messages to the students.

The union is piloting the programme with Apii Arorangi this final term and plans to involve many other schools in 2025.

“It’s building towards something meaningful and purposeful like a tournament, so the kids can, I guess, just see the relevance of having something like this in terms of their learning, as everyone looks to grow,” Koteka added.

Like the World Rugby values of discipline, respect, integrity, passion and solidarity, Koteka and his team hope to share these same values with schools through this programme.