A healthier life with the Amerpoort GO app

Lees de Nederlandse versie

“Let’s go to the pizza first! Yummy – pizza!”. When they arrive at the pizza icon on the map, Kevin urges the others to be silent. He puts the phone on Offek’s wheelchair so that all of them can see and hear the video that pops up. The movie explains that people like fat food so much because our ancestors depended on it to survive. The video helps them to give the right answer to the question. “Yeah, 5 golden balls, let’s go on to the next one!” shouts Bram. “But we have to stay together!” The Amerpoort Go app has its first enthusiasts!

Amerpoort?
Amerpport supports around 2300 people with a mental disability in the provinces of Utrecht and Flevoland in the Netherlands: people with varying ages and grades of disabilities. Together with its employees, volunteers, neighbours, partners and educational institutions they give their clients the possibility to participate in daily life and make their contribution to society.

Hannes Myburgh of Amerpoort’s Team GOUD explains:

“Team GOUD makes an effort to make a healthy lifestyle easier and fun for clients of Amerpoort. Healthy nutrition and sufficient physical activity are inseparable of this goal. As a part of the GOUD programme we have started a partnership with Caught to allow us to reach this goal in a fun and interactive way. For all of our different target audiences we will create games and activities in the Amerpoort GO app, fitting with the needs and interests of our clients. In this way their caretakers can help them to enjoy a healthy lifestyle.”

The Amerpoort GO app

The Amerpoort GO app uses the Caught platform. Because of that, employees of Amerpoort can – easily and by themselves - create interactive walks, challenging treasure hunts and educating quizzes for all 217 locations of Amerpoort. Participants install the app on their own mobile phone, or tablets especially made available for the purpose to take part in this digital experience.

It really works!
Before starting, supervisor Rick explained what was going to happen. Two groups were formed, one group would walk for 20 and the other for approximately 45 minutes as convincing them to walk much longer was thought to be impossible. After 2 hours of playing and walking, both groups had to be called back in under protest.

““Actually most of them were up for continuing, but unfortunately taxis were already arriving to pick up the clients. I found it absolutely fantastic that Caught can contribute to a healthy lifestyle and in a fun and educating manner.”
says Mark Naus of Caught.