• Home • About the Fund  • Partners • Contacts • Our Programs

Project title: "Health Counts Most". 

Organization
Kindergarten # 17 (Zolotoi Kluchik), a pre-school municipal educational institution
Profile of organization
Government
Start date:  June 1,  2006
End date: October 31, 2006
Project summary
This project includes a whole range of activities to improve the health of pre-schoolers:

• Equipping a salt mine – a spelaean treatment room – for preventing; environmental diseases in children and strengthening their immune systems;
• Using environmental design for improving child health: placing phytoncide plants in an “environmental room”;
• Improving the indoor environment of the kindergarten by installing PVC heat shields in doorways;
• Improving the outdoor environment around the kindergarten, which is located near a highway and an industrial area, by planting 50 trees capable of catching pollutants.
• Organizing a seminar “Spelaean Therapy: Health Improvement Measures at Child Care Centers”; and  broadly covering the project in the mass media.

Location of replication
Irkutsk Oblast, Shelekhov
Total budget $9,307           Grantee contribution $1,007               Grant $8,300

Project results:

The equipment of a salt mine – a spelaean treatment room - was completed with the help of partners from Novosibirsk, who also conduct training for the kindergarten’s staff on how to operate this room. The salt mine has special lighting, music, and figurines carved on the walls – all this helps improve child health, lowers respiratory disease risk, reduces stress, and strengthens the immune system. An environmental room was aslo renovated and adorned with antibacterial houseplants. At this room, the children are taught to relax and also undergo aromatherapy. A special Chizhevsky Chandelier ionizes the air in the room. To protect the air around the kindergarten, 50 pine spruce seedlings were planted. The project’s staff conducted a master-class for parents on self health-improvement at which they were taught self-massage and breathing exercises techniques. The project received broad coverage in the local press. 

The kindergarten principal Tatiana Zhukotskaya in the environmental room during an interview to Shelekhov TV

The salt mine has special lighting