Turkey’s Ministry of Education adds its support to the Eczacıbaşı Hygiene Project.
The Eczacıbaşı Group has signed a cooperation protocol with the Turkish Ministry of Education to expand the Eczacıbaşı Hygiene Project, the Group’s international award winning project that aims to secure modern, high quality and healthy environments for children and provide hygiene education at Primary Boarding Schools. In line with the protocol, after the Ministry of Education has upgraded the plumbing at the neediest boarding schools, the Group’s VitrA and Artema brands will completely renovate their bathrooms and showers. Students at these schools will also receive instruction on good personal hygiene practices from the Solo Hygiene Program. Additionally, the Eczacıbaşı Group will extend the Solo personal hygiene instruction program to roughly 72 thousand students at 210 primary boarding schools in 31 cities between 2010 and 2015.
Nimet Çubukçu, Turkey’s Minister of Education, and Bülent Eczacıbaşı, Chairman of the Eczacıbaşı Group, attended the signing ceremony on 8 January 2010. In her speech at the ceremony, Minister Nimet Çubukçu said, “We have a responsibility to help these children, who are disadvantaged in a way because they leave home at an early age and grow up away from their families, to teach them basic life skills, prepare them for life and the future, and improve the living conditions at these schools.” Meeting this responsibility, she added, will need the support of all stakeholders committed to education.
In this regard, the Minister continued, the Eczacıbaşı Hygiene Project was a good example of how businesses could increase public awareness of their own activities and contribute to society at the same time through investments in health and social development – both essential human rights.
Eczacıbaşı Group Chairman Bülent Eczacıbaşı said that it was a great honor that the Ministry had found VitrA, Artema and Solo’s project worthy of its support and added, “Thanks to this backing, I believe we will be able to contribute more effectively to preparing our children for a “healthy future”.
Giving children the emotional and physical environment they deserve is as important as providing them an education, Bülent Eczacıbaşı stressed, which was why the program focused on ensuring that vital living spaces such as bathrooms and showers were hygienic environments. He added that the program was increasingly being enriched by an expanding range of social activities as well.
The Eczacıbaşı Hygiene Project is a Group-wide social responsibility project spearheaded by three Group brands, VitrA, Artema and Solo. The project is renovating bathrooms and showers at Regional Primary Boarding School dormitory and school buildings with VitrA and Artema products, teaching students about good personal care and hygiene practices, and organizing social projects that enrich children’s emotional and intellectual environment. Established in partnership with the Association in Support of Contemporary Living, the project has benefitted from the support of local government as well as Group employees, who participate in the project through Eczacıbaşı Volunteers. The new protocol with the Ministry of Education will enable the Eczacıbaşı Hygiene Project to reach many more schools and students as it enters its third year.
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