Over 12,000 dollars has been collected within the Coolege Vitamine project, recently launched by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), in order to increase the consumption of fresh fruits in Moldovan kindergartens and schools.

Thus, the first five pre-school institutions and schools, due to benefit from fresh and sliced apples starting from 1 September, will be: kindergarten No 91, school-kindergarten No 152 Pas cu Pas (Step by Step), school-kindergarten No 199, Universul theoretical lyceum and Mihai Viteazul theoretical lyceum, all from Chisinau. These institutions will be selected on contest basis.

UNDP representatives are to establish, jointly with the mangers of the selected institutions, the way of distributing the snacks, which will also include information lessons for pupils on this subject. Also, under the project, children are scheduled to be involved in activities of planting fruit trees and harvest fruits, in order to cultivate responsibility for the environment and familiarize with the growing process.

The campaign of collecting funds for distributing fresh and sliced fruits in Moldovan education institutions was launched on 27 May, this year. Under the project, each dollar of the donated sum is to be doubled by UNDP Moldova, and the collected funds will be transferred to companies of processing and packing fruits.

The Coolege Vitamine is part of a project, Developing Innovating Business for Sustainable Economic Growth Locally, financially backed by the Norwegian government and UNDP Moldova. The goal of the project is to promote innovation in the small and medium-sized enterprises sector by transfer and absorption of knowledge, technologies and communication between enterprises. The project is implemented in 2014-2017, reports Moldpress.md .