Over 1,000 children at 18 schools offered healthy meals daily

Around 1,200 children at 18 schools are offered meals by the ‘I cook and offer’ programme of the Sophia Foundation for Children, Education Minister Prodromos Prodromou said on Friday.

He was speaking to reporters during a visit to Nicosia’s Elenion primary school, one of the schools where a healthy lunch is offered daily to children attending the all-day programme.

“I would like to thank the Sophia Foundation for Children, Marina Shacolas who is with us today, and the Bank of Cyprus which supports (the programme). It is a programme that is also implemented in 17 other schools and genuinely bolsters the school community,” he said.

Also positive was the fact that under the programme, parents are also involved in the kitchen every day, he added.

And he thanked the Nicosia school board, noting that the ministry’s plans include building a new nursery with a new kitchen, that will help overcome some problems with current facilities.

The minister noted that the school’s pupils are of different backgrounds, with different mother languages. But the work done there was excellent and Elenion is one of the schools where nearly all pupils participate in the all-day programme.

“At schools like Elenion we achieve something very important. Children are given the opportunity to co-exist with classmates with different backgrounds. At schools such as these, we do not need to teach acceptance of diversity or respect for others, as this occurs daily, in practice.”