“Youth Votes for Health” – a New Joint Program of ALCOA Foundation and the Fund for Sustainable Communities will be Launched in Early 2011


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News, October 2010.

“Youth Votes for Health” – a New Joint Program of ALCOA Foundation and the Fund for Sustainable Communities will be Launched in Early 2011

In October 2010, the Fund for Sustainable Development received a $205,000 donation from Alcoa Foundation for a one-year program “Youth Votes for Health” aimed at introducing healthy lifestyles among youth in two communities: Samara (Kirovsky District) and Belaya Kalitva (Rostov Oblast).

Under this new program, activities involving nearly 2,000 schoolchildren from the two cities will be continued: they will be trained on the basis of specially developed health programs with the use of open-air fitness equipment intended for children of all ages and adults. Nearly 30 outdoor new generation fitness machines will be installed in several schools in each city. Along with health training, the students will attend classes devoted to healthy life styles that will also focus on the subject of healthy eating. Program activities will include organizing a festival “Healthy School – Healthy Family” and a final festival “Clean Water” to raise the awareness of students, teachers, parents, schools, local departments of education and health, businesses and municipal administrations about the issue of healthy lifestyles and the need to promote a healthy environment in both cities.

This Program is the fifth such initiative carried out by ALCOA Foundation in collaboration with the Fund for Sustainable Development and targeted at ensuring the sustainable development of regions where Alcoa Company is present. The previous program – We Are in Charge of the Future! ALCOA Sustainability and Conservation Program for Russia – consisted of four components and was fulfilled in 2006-2010.
Since the beginning of the program “We Are in Charge of the Future!” in Belaya Kalitva, Samara (Kirovsky District) and Lubuchany Settlement in Moscow Oblast in 2007, a total of 21 schools, 6 additional school education centers and 4 NGOs became its participants. Every year, over one thousand students of 5-10 grades were involved in grant activities, small environmental research projects, creative contests and summer conservation camps.
During that time, local schools and NGOs worked on 32 environmental and social projects of a total coast of 6,954,027 rubles; and teachers from Moscow conducted 33 master-classes for 230 teachers and instructors of additional school education centers and over 2,000 schoolchildren. During the past three years, the research papers of students developed under the Program were presented to the National Telecommunications Conference “Children Will Save Russia’s Nature” in the framework of the National Telecommunications Project “Environmental Commonwealth”.
The new phase of work marked by the beginning of the project “Youth Votes for Health” will carrying on cooperation that is helping to educate young citizens to be responsible for their own health and for the health of the environment.