A leading environmental initiative used by 140 schools to tackle child obesity and traffic jams has had a major makeover.

The walk to school scheme Walk on Wednesday (Wow) has been reinvented as Active Wow for the coming academic year and now has a new crew of cartoon characters, led by Buster Bug, to promote it in schools.

Participating schools use the scheme’s exciting range of resource materials, activities, and competitions to persuade pupils to walk, cycle, or park and stride to school. Together with top prizes including tickets to leading Kent attractions and story time sessions with celebrities such as Phil ‘Mister Maker’ Gallagher, Wow encourages regular participation, a more active lifestyle, and a drop in vehicle congestion at the school gate.

Altogether 40,000 children and families at primary school use Wow to get to school, generating 600,000 green journeys and removing 250,000 school-run car journeys from Kent roads each year.

Schools will have to sign up before the end of the summer term to join next academic year as the resources are printed and collated by Kent County Council and Medway Council over the summer holidays. Schools receive a discount on the resources if booked prior to July 1.

Simon Dolby from the Active Wow team said: “The new look walk to school scheme is very exciting and is creating quite a buzz in the schools that have seen it already. We have some major announcements planned about exciting extra features to make green travel even more relevant and useful to schools with a stronger road safety skills element part of the package.”

The walk to school campaign is supported by Kent County Council, Medway Council, London Borough of Bexley, Orbit, Golding Homes, Bel UK, Specsavers, Eurostar, Whitefriars, 3Rs, Jelf, Countrystyle Recycling, Gallaghers Aggregates and Volker Highways.

To find out more or download an information brochure, click HERE or visit www.kmwalktoschool.co.uk