Participants and students of Kim Đồng Primary School at the launching ceremony of the programme "Mizuiku - I love clean water" on Monday in Hà Nội. Photo courtesy of Suntory PepsiCo Việt Nam Beverage Co., Ltd

HÀ NỘI — This year’s water resources protection programme, "Mizuiku - I love clean water", was officially launched on Monday at Kim Đồng Primary School in Hà Nội.

The programme’s launch ceremony was co-organised by the Ministry of Education and Training, Suntory Holdings Limited and Suntory PepsiCo Việt Nam Beverage Co., Ltd.

Mizuiku is an educational initiative about nature and water, which Suntory Holdings Limited in Japan has implemented since 2004. The programme was expanded and deployed in Việt Nam, with the name "Mizuiku - I love clean water" in 2015.

It demonstrates Suntory PepsiCo's strong action and commitment to water resource protection and sustainable development in Việt Nam.

The programme's scale this year will be expanded.

The programme's documents are expected to become a teaching guide for primary school students in the extra-curricular programmes of all primary schools across the country.

This year, the programme will promote education through training courses for more than 5,000 teachers at 300 primary schools and organise 6,000 classes for nearly 210,000 third-and-fourth graders in six localities of Lạng Sơn, Hà Nội, Đà Nẵng, Đắk Nông, HCM City and Vĩnh Long.

It will also support 20 clean water projects to improve local school sanitation quality.

Within the framework of cooperation activities with the Hồ Chí Minh Communist Youth Union’s Central Committee, the programme will focus on developing experiential education for students by signing a cooperation agreement with the Forest Protection Department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

It aims to organise extracurricular activities to experience forests and build environmental information corners in national parks, contributing to spreading awareness and affirming the role of protecting forest resources and preserving clean water for Vietnamese children.

During the eight-year programme implementation journey, more than 2.6 million Vietnamese people have benefited.

More than 141,000 primary school students participated in 3,728 Mizuiku classes on saving and preserving clean water sources, with the participation of nearly 3,924 teachers and volunteers nationwide.

At the launching ceremony, Deputy Minister of Education and Training Ngô Thị Minh said positive achievements. The programme raised awareness among primary school students about water protection, school health and environmental sanitation.

The ministry will continue to create conditions for the effective implementation of the programme in the coming time, she said.

Masaaki Fujiwara, Chief Sustainability Officer of Suntory Group, said it is delighted to see the positive benefits that the programme has brought to Việt Nam.

''This is also the motivation for us to expand the programme to many other countries around the world,'' he said. — VNS