Be a Part of the Future
Jump with Jill-ville is a gamified nutrition education portal in development that will allow open access to the world of the music-based nutrition education program. We are placing this beloved world into the palms of everyone's hands to address the intense equity gaps in health education access.
The Problem.
Approximately 19% of kids age 2-19 have obesity; childhood obesity is estimated to cost $14 billion annually in direct health expenses. Since kids today have high expectations for their entertainment, investing in engaging and efficacious health education yields important dividends for addressing poor diet quality and exercise habits.
The Solution.
Jump with Jill changes the way kids learn about health. Boring directives on what not to eat is one of the driving forces behind our culture’s neglect of what’s best for us. The truth is, people know what it takes to be healthy. Even a child can tell you to eat your vegetables and drink more water. But the gap between knowledge and action is widened by the cues to unhealthy behavior that inundate us every day - professional athletes tout fast food in advertisements, vending machines offer our favorite sugar fix, and banner ads encourage us to shed pounds to look like a computer-altered model half our age. Everything you ever needed to know about how to effectively communicate a desired behavior can be learned from advertising. The characters, catchphrases, repetition, and music of well-funded marketing campaigns so strongly connect to our subconscious desires that they can override our logic and mask the very real drawbacks (or even dangers!) of the products being sold. Advertisers work very diligently to convert sugar water into a hip, multi-million dollar brand. They target kids to establish lifelong consumers. Today’s generation of kids needs to develop brand loyalty to healthy habits. We think it’s so important, we sing and dance about it.
Over 1.3 million kids across six countries have been inspired by the singable anthems of the award-winning nutrition education program, Jump with Jill. And it works. Jump with Jill empowers teachers, increases time teachers and students engaging with nutrition education, improves enthusiasm for learning about nutrition for both teachers and students, increases consumption of healthy foods, improves access to effective nutrition educate tools, and sustains changes over time. Please see full reports and peer-reviewed publications here: https://www.jumpwithjill.com/results
The Moment.
Right now, we only have the resources to provide our behaviorally-focused songs, activity sheets, danceable music videos, cooking segments and signature show to schools and organizations that can pay for the program. Amplifying the healthy equity of our trusted program is the natural next step. So that kids everywhere can access and benefit from our program, we propose a gamified nutrition education portal: Jump with Jill-ville.
A well-designed user platform will steeply decrease barriers of cost, location, and educational support for users while creating a home for our health-positive messages. By making this concrete leap into the virtual space, we embed our mission in our ever-changing world. This grant will serve as our seed money to develop a kid-tested, grownup-approved virtual platform. With our 15 year track record in the industry, we will leverage our partners to underwrite related content for continued development and tech support over the longterm to sustain access. We have performed live at approximately 3% of the country’s elementary schools. It is realistic to assume that we could get this game into the hands of all of our past schools and grow that number by 10% over a three year period.