(BIVN) – Mountain View Elementary invited the community to join in the celebration Saturday over the school’s recent Blue Zones Project approval. Mountain View is one of only a handful of schools on Hawaii Island to earn the approval.

The free event featured cooking demos, info booths, and activities like zumba.

“Brought to Hawaiʻi through an innovative sponsorship by HMSA in collaboration with Sharecare and Blue Zones, LLC,” a recent media release says, “Blue Zones Project is a community-by-community well-being improvement initiative designed to enable community members to live longer, happier lives with lower rates of chronic diseases and a higher quality of life.” With a Blue Zones Project East Hawaii, North Hawaii and now West Hawaii, the entire Big Island is engaged in the Blue Zones Project.

Blue Zones employs evidence-based ways to help people live longer, better. The Company’s work is rooted in the New York Times best-selling books The Blue Zones Solution: Eating and Living Like the World’s Healthiest People, The Blue Zones and Thrive—all published by National Geographic books. Since 2009, Blue Zones has applied the tenets of the books to communities and corporations across the U.S. and has successfully raised life expectancy and lowered health care costs while bringing down smoking and obesity rates. Blue Zones takes a systematic, environmental approach to well-being, which focuses on optimizing policy, building design, social networks, and the built environment. The Blue Zones Project is based on this innovative approach. For more information, visit bluezones.com.