New York, New York – ZESPRI® Kiwifruit announced its partnership with six children’s charities from each region of the United States to drive ZESPRI’s childhood obesity campaign, Kiwifruit for Kids. The campaign centers on a uniquely designed Facebook application that allows people around the U.S. to contribute to the cause. Kiwifruit for Kids launches on August 31st at 12:01 AM and will end at midnight on October 21st, 2011.
ZESPRI created the Kiwifruit for Kids Facebook campaign to help combat the childhood obesity epidemic, which affects nearly 9 million children over the age of 6 and is responsible for over 300,0000 deaths each year. Kiwifruit for Kids will raise awareness for this crisis on several levels: to raise money for charities committed to the cause, to raise awareness about the epidemic on a national level, and to popularize healthy diet and lifestyle alternatives for the youth of America (such as eating fruits and vegetables instead of candy and fast food).
Kiwifruit for Kids allows Facebook users to earn online points for the region of their choice. Points are earned by choosing kiwifruit characters, playing games, tweeting about the campaign, having friends from users’ social networks join the competition, and more. The region with the most points by October 21st wins $10K for their corresponding charity. To the second place region, ZESPRI donates $5k. The remaining non-profits receive $1500 from ZESPRI for participating.
Please visit www.kiwifruitforkids.com to play Kiwifruit for Kids and help raise money and awareness for childhood obesity.**
ZESPRI® Kiwifruit
With sales revenues of $1.5 billion, ZESPRI Kiwifruit is the world’s most successful horticulture marketing company and the ZESPRI® Brand is recognized as the world leader in premium quality kiwifruit. Based in Mount Maunganui, New Zealand, we are 100 percent owned by current or past kiwifruit growers, and employ approximately 250 people in New Zealand, Asia, Europe and North America. On behalf of our 2,700 growers in New Zealand and 1,200 growers based elsewhere, ZESPRI manages kiwifruit innovation and supply management, distribution management and marketing of ZESPRI Green, Gold and Organic Kiwifruit (www.zesprikiwi.com).
The Mollen Foundation (West)
The Mollen Foundation encourages, motivates and empowers children to live active and healthier lifestyles. Our health and wellness experts and educators have partnered with key community leaders to provide school-age children and their parents essential skills for healthy living. Through highly engaging, interactive learning technology, the foundation provides evidencebased educational programs that inspire measurable behavior changes (www.mollenfoundation.org).
Kids@Heart (Northwest)
Kids@Heart is a collaborative initiative led by St. Charles Health System, based in Bend, Oregon. The initiative is comprised of a variety of strategies targeting childhood obesity that include giving children actual prescriptions to access resources in their communities that help them thrive, encouraging changes in nutrition at local schools and childcare settings and promoting policies and community environments that make “healthy choice the easy choice.” Kids@Heart partners with regional health departments, parks departments, pediatricians, schools and more to reverse childhood obesity trends using evidence-based models from throughout the nation (www.kidsatheart.org).
New Orleans Outreach for Healthy Habits (South)
New Orleans Outreach for Healthy Habits strives to create a lifelong love of activity, nutrition and learning for children each school year in its after-school programs by incorporating team sports, martial arts, biking, dance, obesity awareness and more into its projects at its six participating public schools in New Orleans. Healthy Habits also works with its partners to sponsor cooking and gardening programs to promote the benefits of healthy foods and thus balance each student's academic success with a well-rounded lifestyle curriculum (www.nooutreach.com).
C.H.O.I.C.E.S. (Southeast)
C.H.O.I.C.E.S. is the acronym for The Center Helping Obesity In Children End Successfully, Inc. The name truly reflects our mission to prevent and eliminate the obesity epidemic in children by enabling them to make better choices as it relates to food and lifestyle. C.H.O.I.C.E.S. is made up of a small but committed team of educators, medical professionals, fitness professionals, parent volunteers and a very dedicated staff (www.choicesforkids.org).
Crossroads (Northeast)
The goal of Crossroads is to provide a nurturing environment to support the healthy growth and development for children, youth and teens through performing art based programing. The organization provides these programs on topics such as character education, social awareness issues, healthy lifestyles and wellness. Crossroads provides their services through a multitude of programs including Breathe Magazine, Breathe Kids and The Maine Academic Scholarship Program. Programs are researched based, focusing on the Search Institutes Developmental Assets and the Let’s Go Maine 5-2-1-0 Program. (www.cycsaco.org) (www.breathemaine.org).
The Säjai Foundation (Midwest)
The Säjai® (pronounced “SAW-zhay”) Foundation, a Minnesota-based nonprofit, has developed curricula for school, after-school and summer camp programs to teach children ages 6 to 11 about the fundamentals of healthy eating, getting enough physical activity, and exploring nature. The ultimate goal is to have active, healthy living be an integral part of who each child is, not just something they do, and that they will appreciate, respect and be involved with nature (www.sajaifoundation.org).
* As published in the American College of Nutrition Journal, October 1997.
** For official rules and regulations, please visit www.kiwifruitforkids.com/rules
Source: ZESPRI® Kiwifruit
