The RWE Foundation is supporting three further social projects in Essen with the aim of creating more equal opportunities for children and young people. The three selected projects will receive a total of around 1,356,000 euros over the next three years.

RuhrKunstbewegt – a project of the 21 Ruhrkunst-Museen

The RuhrKunstMuseen network is developing "RuhrKunstbewegt", an educational programme for children and young people from low-income backgrounds. The participants choose works of art from the participating museums and reinterpret them through other artistic forms, such as dance, music, or drama, supported by trained staff. At the end of each series of workshops, there is a final presentation of the works. With the public exhibition, the children and young people experience self-efficacy, community and appreciation of their creative work. They also get to know the museum as a place that provides new experiences, while expanding their language skills through creative forms of expression. The RWE Foundation is funding the project with around 758,000 euros from 2024 to 2026.

Healthy growing up in Essen – a project of the Essen Youth Welfare Service

Family Primary School Centres are not only a place of learning, but also a place of wellbeing in everyday school life for socially disadvantaged children and their families. In the two centres in Essen (Schule an der Viktoriastraße and Bergmühlenschule), children therefore not only receive education, but also programmes focused on healthy nutrition, mental health, and exercise. In addition, there is advice and support for parents experiencing difficult life situations. Schools thus become a point of contact for families and bundle various, primarily preventive offers that seek to improve children's educational opportunities. The two subsidised family primary school centres focus on "healthy growing up" and offer a comprehensive range of services to alleviate child poverty and its consequences. The RWE Foundation is funding them with 300,000 euros from 2024 to 2026.

Multilingual bookcases – a project of coach@school e.V.

The coach@school Bookcase Programme is the first multilingual reading and arithmetic programme that connects the educational venues of daycare, school and home. Several times a year, each child takes home a suitcase for a week, filled with children's books in up to 50 languages. This not only removes the hurdle of reading aloud to parents, but also helps to expand the vocabulary in the mother tongue – and this in turn has a positive effect on the German vocabulary. The daycare programme starts with early childhood support and strengthens listening and the joy of reading through reading aloud on a regular basis. The reading case builds on this in the 1st and 2nd grade and practises the first reading techniques. The maths reading kit follows in the 3rd and 4th grades. It contains mathematics-related children's books and promotes everyday maths skills with maths and puzzle games. At the start of the programme, parents are informed how they can best support their children. The specialists also receive extensive further training. The RWE Foundation is funding the bookcase programme with around 298,000 euros from 2024 to 2026 in Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate.

The RWE Foundation was established on the company's 125th anniversary in 2023 and has a seed capital of 125 million euros. With the income from its endowment, it supports charitable projects for socially disadvantaged children and young people throughout Europe. In December 2023, the first funding awards totalling around 820,000 euros were handed over.

Pictures of the donation handovers for media use (credit: RWE) are available at the RWE Mediacentre.