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Description
The Really Healthy School program is a tool for improving nutrition and education about healthy and sustainable eating in schools and kindergartens, with an impact on health, environment, local economy, culture, community life. The program helps meet 15 of the UN''s 17 sustainable development goals, including "health and quality of life", "quality education", "responsible production and consumption" and "climate action". To date, 478 schools and kindergartens in the Czech Republic have joined the program. We have very good results in implementing the program, but at the same time we face financial uncertainty. The program does not have long-term regular support from state institutions, we depend on the annual results of applications for grants and subsidies. Since 2022, we have been forced to charge a small amount for membership in the program. Therefore, we urgently need to innovate the way we reach schools and improve the products we offer so that we can maintain the entire network and gain new members. As part of the project, we will create a set of practical tools that will strengthen the organization internally and externally, support affiliation, management, PR and marketing, and improve the quality of services and products offered. The primary target group of the project are the employees of the organization. The secondary target group are schools: principals, teachers, children and pupils, school canteen staff, parents, founders.
Summary of project results
In the project, we dealt with the current situation of the organization. After seven years of activity, we have achieved very good results and at the same time found ourselves in a turning point. Due to financial uncertainty, we were forced to charge for membership in the program starting in 2022, and we were anxiously waiting to see how many schools would be willing to financially support their membership in the network, even if with a small amount. In this context, we are aware of the need to innovate, modernize and refresh our services, products and external presentation, as well as to reflect more the real needs of target groups. From this, we promise to maintain the interest of schools in membership and to gain new members. The success of the program in schools will also have an impact on fundraising and the long-term financial sustainability of the organization. When evaluating the situation, we start from discussions and analysis of the current situation, our own feelings and the reactions of the target groups. If we fail to ensure top quality services and long-term and stable funding, we will have to reduce the workload of the people dedicated to the program. Due to a lack of funds, we already had to radically reduce the network of regional coordinators who worked in individual regions. We partially compensated for this outage by switching to online meeting and consultation platforms for schools. Further downsizing is no longer desirable and is demotivating for the remaining team members.
The main activities and outputs of the project were: active involvement of the entire team in the implementation with the support of a mentor, innovation of the mission and vision (published in the annual report), several events examining the needs of target groups of pupils and young people (questionnaires), evaluation of the expected key competences of children and pupils (poster), established official cooperation with one of the self-governing regions and communication with others, acquisition of an important donor (the company Lidl CR), creation of six completely new methodological materials for kindergartens and primary schools in very good content and graphic quality (print and download), creation of a new Facebook group and e-mail newsletter for cooking teachers, promotional materials (tables, chef''s hats), two PR events: a seminar in Hodonín and a conference in Prague, with a total of 194 participants.
Improvement of communication in the team, better adaptation of products to the needs of the target groups of children, pupils and teachers, improvement of the way of approaching public administration and private funders, higher attractiveness of methodological materials for nursery and primary schools, attractive promotional materials for nursery and primary schools. Focusing on issues of management, promotion and quality of methodological materials contributed to the long-term sustainability of the organization. Since the start of the project, we have succeeded in two grant procedures under the Erasmus program. We continue to host very successfully online conferences. Since the application was submitted, 50 new schools have joined the Really Healthy School program. We have introduced a membership fee for schools, which makes a significant contribution to the financial stability of the organization. We are more and more known in public. One of the outcome documents of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, which took place in December 2023 in Dubai, lists the Really Healthy School among the recommended examples from practice of a whole-school approach to food. The title of the document is "SCHOOL MEALS AND FOOD SYSTEMS: Rethinking the consequences for climate, environment, biodiversity and food sovereignty". We acquired an important sponsor with a long-term perspective. We have secured jobs for 4 employees.