Jooay App: Promoting Participation in Leisure

Contact
Mehrnoosh Movahed
Email

Participating in sports and other leisure activities is an important part of childhood development; however, accessing appropriate activities and information is a challenge for children with disabilities. We created “Jooay,” a mobile and web-based app, to provide families with information about appropriate leisure activities available in communities across Canada. In this project, we are seeking ways to optimize the use of this technology, to increase its use for more children and families, and to use it as a tool to inform policy and community changes.

Principal Investigator:
Dr. Keiko Shikako, McGill University

The team provided a project update at the 2022 CHILD-BRIGHT Virtual Symposium. View it here.

Research theme:
BRIGHT Supports: Projects to integrate mental health into care

Age range:
0–21 years

Start date:
October 2016

Website:
www.jooay.com

Social Media:
Twitter | Facebook

2020-21 Project Update

Read our 2020-21 update

2019-20 Project Update

The Jooay community grew by leaps and bounds in 2019-2020! Our Jooay App currently lists about 2,000 adapted and inclusive activities across Canada, helping over 3,000 families of children and youth with disabilities, clinicians, and educators to find leisure activities that can help them improve their health and have fun, too.

“We were excited to engage a new youth as a patient-partner in our research group. Jess Silver leads a non-profit organization, Flex for Access Inc., that promotes inclusive fitness, and we took part in its social media and awareness events.”

This year, we initiated several new partnerships with like-minded organizations to help improve inclusion in the community at large. We also continued to build partnerships with key Quebec leisure organizations and with families of children and youth with disabilities in multiple community events.

Our project has received interest internationally. In June 2019, at the United Nations Conference of the States Parties on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), the Jooay App was mentioned by the Canadian Minister of Disability, the Hon. Carla Qualtrough, as one of the key strategies in Canada to promote the participation of children with disabilities in sports and leisure. The Canadian Public Health Association also introduced Jooay as one of the 3 promising practices in Canada which promote physical activity.

More and more, we are connecting with our community online. Our Facebook group, Community Connecting to Play, now has 175 members, and 891 people follow our Instagram account. During the pandemic, we have shifted our efforts to list online inclusive leisure activities on the app and Facebook group that children and families can do from home. We look forward to continuing to grow the Jooay community in the next year!