The charity facilitates a number of projects and awareness initiatives to fulfil its mission of preventing chest, heart and stroke illnesses in Northern Ireland.
With over 200,000 people in the country living with long term conditions, the NICHS ‘Chester’s Challenge’ programme targets primary and secondary school-aged children to try and modify their behaviour before long-term damage can occur.
The funding provided by the airport will help support the delivery of the programme to over 1,000 pupils in 26 schools across Northern Ireland.
Jessica Perry, Health Promotion Co-ordinator at NICHS, said: “The Northern Ireland Chest Heart and Stroke Schools Programme is based on the belief that prevention is better than a cure, and that it is important to educate children early so they can make healthy choices to avoid future illness as they get older.
“Recent results from the latest NI Health and Wellbeing survey revealed that 25% of children in Northern Ireland aged two-15 years are either overweight or obese. In addition, statistics also show that only 43.4% of children meet the recommendations of doing more than 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per day.
“Through delivering the Chester’s Challenge programme, we can tackle these issues with young people to educate them before any serious illnesses occur. We are very grateful for the support provided by Belfast City Airport.”
The charity is the latest organisation to receive support from Belfast City Airport’s Community Fund, which has provided over £350,000 of funding to local community groups, projects, schools and charities since its inception eight years ago.
Stephen Patton, HR and Corporate Responsibility Manager at Belfast City Airport, said: “Belfast City Airport is a proud supporter of the Northern Ireland Chest Heart and Stroke’s Schools Programme. Chester’s Challenge is a fantastic initiative that aims to educate, empower and encourage young people to live a healthy life.
“At the airport, we have an award-winning Corporate Responsibility strategy, focused on four key areas – People, Community, Education and Environment. Through our Community Fund, we endeavour to support a variety of projects, schools, initiatives and charities with numerous campaigns to support these core ideas – and the NICHS Schools Programme fulfils a number of these.”
In 2017, the airport’s Corporate Responsibility strategy has won numerous awards, with the airport crowned Business in the Community’s Responsible Company of the Year, among other industry accolades.
