Accra, Ghana – On the 3rd of July, Nestlé Central and West Africa (CWAR) held a workshop with the partners of its Healthy Kids programme to share best practices and discuss how to strengthen and scale up the initiative in the region.
Nestlé seeks to promote healthy eating and active lifestyles to help children achieve and maintain a healthy body weight into adulthood. The Nestlé Healthy Kids programme forms an integral part of the company’s commitment to help children develop positive habits that will last a lifetime.
In Central and West Africa, the initiative has already benefited more than 75,000 school-aged children in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal. The programme is developed and implemented in partnership with Ministries of Education, Health, universities or non-governmental organisations and tailored to local health and nutritional needs.
“At Nestlé, we are convinced that for a company to be able to operate over the long term, it needs to create value for the communities where it operates”, said Kais Marzouki, Market Head of Nestlé CWAR in his Welcome Address. “This is particularly true in our region where Nestlé cannot thrive without a healthy population. The Healthy Kids programme is part of our response to the malnutrition issues facing the countries in Central and West Africa”, he added.
Nestlé and its partners discussed how to build sustainable and impactful programmes that contribute to the health of local schools and their surrounding communities. Topics addressed included developing scientific and evidence-based monitoring & evaluation; addressing teachers’ needs and teaching methods and moving beyond the classroom to engage the whole community.
In 2014, there were 77 Healthy Kids Programmes taking place around the world, with 294 partners, including NGOs, nutrition institutes, national sport federations and local governments.