By Mike Rowbottom

Nestle IAAF_logoJanuary 28 - Nestlé will become the main sponsor of the Kids' Athletics programme – set up by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in 2005 - for the next five years, starting from this month.


Nestlé will fund further worldwide development of Kids' Athletics, which is one of the biggest grassroots development programmes in the world of sports and which reached a cumulative audience of 1.5 million children across 100 territories by the end of 2011.

"IAAF Kids' Athletics is one of the central pillars of the IAAF Athletics' World Plan, our association's strategic policy which, as we celebrate the IAAF Centenary in 2012, is designed to ensure that the sport of Athletics and its world governing body are fit and ready for the tasks of the next 100 years," said IAAF President Lamine Diack.

"Our five year sponsorship with Nestlé, a company with a global reputation in nutrition, health and wellness, will help to ensure that the central goals of IAAF Kids' Athletics are not only met but enhanced. It will allow Athletics to reach out to millions more kids to encourage them to take up a healthier lifestyle."

The new sponsorship will allow the IAAF to organise additional courses for lecturers and coaches and eventually to reach a larger number of children in existing or new markets.

The IAAF objectives of the programme are to make athletics the No.1 participation sport in schools, to educate children into sport in general and athletics in particular and thus promote a balanced and healthy lifestyle, and to attract and sustain the potential sporting stars of tomorrow.

Nestlé, with headquarters in Vevey, Switzerland, is the world's leading nutrition, health and wellness company with an annual turnover of CHF 109.7 billion (£760.5 million/$120.3 billion/€910 million) in 2010 and with more than 280,000 employees worldwide.

"Nestlé is pleased to have entered into a five-year sponsorship with IAAF," said Janet Voûte, Nestlé's vice-president of public affairs.

"Over and above supporting IAAF's Kids' Athletics, we believe that this will further enhance the Nestlé Healthy Kids Programme, which aims to raise nutrition, health and wellness awareness of school age children around the world.

"Our programme reached an estimated six million children in 60 countries in 2011."

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