AVK Teaches Ukrainian School Students about Healthy Food

Thousand Ukrainian school students studied principles of healthy food and the basics of the consumer rights, together with AVK

“I want to be Smart and Healthy!” Such was the slogan of the informative and educational campaign conducted among the students of elementary schools and lyceums of the largest Ukrainian cities. The thousands of school students could learn about the principles of the healthy food and the basics of how to defend their consumer rights.

The campaign was conducted by the All-Ukrainian – government organization “Consumer’s Union of Ukraine” supported by AVK. As a winning proposal of the open competition organized by AVK last year, the project was awarded grant funding.

As a part of the project specialists of the “Consumers’ Union of Ukraine”, in the team with the health experts, psychologists, and lawyers, prepared and published the illustrated how-to manual for children. This manual for young consumers who want to be smart and healthy is distributed among educational institutions of Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa and Kharkiv. The 5000 copies of the manual were distributed to libraries of 500 schools and nine lyceums.

According to Leonid Shkolnik, the Chairman of the Board of the All-Ukrainian NGO “Consumer’s Union of Ukraine”, the large-scale All-Ukrainian educational campaign with the children as the most vulnerable group of consumers is one of the priorities of the consumer non-governmental organizations. He believes that supporting similar programs by private business is especially important. Earlier the Consumers’ Union issued informational brochures through the funding received from international donor agencies.

“One can hardly overestimate the significance of investments into enhancement of awareness and education of young consumers concerning their rights, rules of healthy nutrition, and features of the foodstuffs. The future of Ukraine, its economic prospects depend not only on competitive national business but also on consumers rather literate to defend their rights. We are all interested that Ukraine never become the market for sale of low quality and out-of-fashion goods,” believes Leonid Schkolnik.

The General Director of AVK Andriy Dykunov noted that the education campaign of the Consumer’s Union meets the basic values of AVK: “We are interested in the development of the healthy nation – only healthy individual may enjoy life and get pleasure from creativity, labor and certainly sweets. That is why we care about health of our consumers not only offering the healthy products but also actively participating in the formation of the public movement for the healthy lifestyle. In addition, the healthy-giving food is a world-wide trend and we want that Ukraine never lags behind developed nations,” he stressed.

The brochure “I want to be Smart and Healthy!” highlights the basics of the healthy lifestyle and the consumer culture, in the user-friendly format. The first section provides information on the consumer rights, consumer behavior rules and complemented by hands-on pieces of advice for young consumers. The second section delivers materials on features of different products, the rational nutrition and rules of the healthy lifestyle.