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Sean Ashton was perhaps not the best advertisement for an active lifestyle when he launched UWA's Global Corporate Challenge last month.

The Manager of Injury Management and Wellbeing was sporting a black eye after a rugby match on the weekend.

"Playing rugby contributes to my health and wellbeing!" he told 200 UWA employees, who had signed up to walk at least 10,000 steps a day for the next 16 weeks. (A total of 65 UWA teams, with 455 members are taking part this year.)

The Global Corporate Challenge (GCC) is a world-wide program aimed at getting the workforce moving.  Participants count their daily steps with a pedometer (or accelerometer, as it has been called this year) and their team's progress is tracked on a world map.

UWA teams have been taking part for several years.

Last year, we were the fourth most active Australian university in the challenge. UWA teams walked 330,605 kilometres and, between them, participants lost almost 200 kilograms.

This year, there are side challenges and prizes. Send your team photo to [email protected] by 14 June to be in the running for a $100 voucher for the University Club café.

There are monthly prizes of café vouchers, massages and healthy cookbooks to be won. And the Club has sponsored a prize for the winning team at the end of the challenge.

UWA Sport and Recreation is also supporting the GCC. Everybody taking part has been given five free passes to the gym.  There is a Treadmill Challenge this week (June 10 - 15) for teams to clock up extra steps. In July, to coincide with the Tour de France, the Tour de UWA will be run in the gym from 15 July, with kilometres cycled on stationery bikes converted to steps. And from 26 August, Sport and Recreation will provide a team with bicycles and a guide (if needed) for a cycle around the river.

Everybody at UWA is urged to encourage and support their colleagues in the GCC.