Japanese Prep School Begins Assisting Developing Countries in Proportion to High Schoolers' Study Hours

Waseda Prep School, a major Japanese prep school, announced on October 13, 2010, that it started a new project for the eradication of malaria together with the non-profit organization Millennium Promise. They signed the agreement at the partners meeting for the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals at the United Nations General Assembly held on September 21, 2010. The school adds up the number of hours when high school students attend classes at the school, and donate a corresponding amount of money to Millennium Promise. This is the first such social action model of its kind in the world; the longer the students study, the more is contributed.

The Millennium Development Goals are the time-bound and quantified targets for eliminating extreme poverty from the world, adopted by the United Nations member states. Meanwhile, Millennium Promise was founded with the vision of overcoming extreme poverty by 2025.

The contributions from the school will be used for the project to fight malaria jointly supported by Millennium Promise and the United Nations Development Programme. Millennium Promise regularly reports the status of the project to the school. The school's future plans include dispatching representative students to areas suffering from malaria, and offering special lectures at the school by directors of the project.

Posted: 2011/01/26 06:00:15 AM