Have you seen the Yellow Balls? A massive yellow semi-truck delivered almost 100 of the balls into the hands of Booksin students attending the YMCA’s afterschool child care program last Friday, and then the truck unloaded hundreds more at the Tapestry Art Festival downtown. With 600 balls handed out each day over Labor Day Weekend, there are bound to be quite a few in WG.

So, what’s the deal? It’s VERB, a social marketing campaign coordinated by the US Centers for Disease Control:

The VERB campaign encourages young people ages 9–13 (tweens) years to be physically active every day. The campaign combines paid advertising, marketing strategies, and partnership efforts to reach the distinct audiences of tweens and adults/influencers.

Among other things, the program also encourages kids to exercise and then blog about it! As the yellow balls pass from kid to kid, their online stories grow. At “press time” more than 110 balls had passed through the 95125 zip code. If your kids have one of the balls … play with it, pass it on, and have them blog about it!