How the ‘Love Your Park’ BetterPoints programme in Ealing got one family more active

Santosh and his family have become more active and regularly contribute to the upkeep and cleanliness of their local park and neighbourhood thanks to the BetterPoints ‘Love Your Park’ programme.

BetterPoints and the London Borough of Ealing have teamed up to bring ‘Love Your Park’ to Ealing. ‘Love Your Park’ is a year long BetterPoints programme which, as the name suggests, is designed to encourage residents to enjoy and take care of local parks and green spaces.

Residents who join the programme are rewarded with BetterPoints for a range of activities in the park, such as walking over half a mile and picking up litter. Rewards are available for scanning QR codes on the bins as collected litter is disposed of. BetterPoints can be exchanged for vouchers or donated to charity.

Santosh and his family joined the programme and Santosh got in touch to tell us about the impact it has had on them.

‘The BetterPoints app has helped us make positive changes to our day-to-day lives’ he says ‘before I joined I used to run regularly, but now I run, walk and litter pick – sometimes all at the same time!

‘It’s also changed the way I think about litter when I’m out and about. I’ve introduced the app and Love Your Park to my family, friends and work colleagues too.

‘Since joining Love Your Park I now do my warm up, run, and a cool-down before I finish off with a walk whilst litter picking. It’s helped me add more miles for my marathon training. I am much more active than before.’

The BetterPoints platform, which uses monetary and non-monetary rewards to encourage desired behaviours, can be applied to a whole range of scenarios depending on the behaviour clients wish to encourage.

To name but a few it was used in Bologna to reduce single-occupancy car journeys, in Sutton and Greenwich to encourage improve air quality through active travel, in Ebbsfleet to encourage people to be more active and we’ll soon be rewarding people in the South West for recycling their e-waste responsibly.

The reward and messaging mix is customised for each programme to ensure it engages the target group. Gamification features are regularly employed to make the whole thing fun and engaging. Over the summer of 2018, a number of virtual Treasure Hunts ran as part of the Love Your Park programme, these are what initially attracted Santosh and his family.

‘What helped introduce the app to my family was the summer virtual family treasure hunt challenge. I took my family to the park every day during the school holidays. When we won the Vue cinema voucher the children were so excited. We really enjoyed family movie time with popcorn! Since then lots of my family and friends are seriously into it.

‘Now my kids are more aware of litter when we are walking around Ealing, when they see litter, just pick it up and bin it. The whole family is far more active as a result. I think this will make a real change in our community.’

The BetterPoints platform can be configured to encourage and reward a wide range of desired behaviours. To find out more about how we can help your organisation with one of our packaged or bespoke interventions please email us or request a demo.

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