Andbank and the Red Cross present the start of the 2017-2018 PAPI course

The start of the new school year of the PAPI project was presented today along with the results of the training carried out last year, with a 100% success rate in terms of the children trained.

A press conference was held this afternoon to present the start of the new school year of the PAPI project (First Aid for Children), organised by the Red Cross in collaboration with Andbank. The press conference was attended by Josep Pol, president of the Andorran Red Cross and Josep M. Cabanes, Assistant Director General of Banca País d’Andbank.

This is the 9th year in which the course has been carried out in all the country’s schools for children of 10 and 11 years’ old during their last year of primary school. The purpose of the course is to provide first aid training in schools, to help children learn how to react in an emergency situation, as well as to encourage them to become responsible and caring citizens.

Josep M. Cabanes from Andbank explains that “at Andbank we saw the opportunity to collaborate on this great project. It is a forward-looking project aimed at the children of our principality who will be the future citizens of our country”. Andbank has been developing corporate social responsibility with a firm commitment to our society for some time now. The social and educational nature of the PAPI project convinced us to take an active role in it.

The level of achievement seen during the last school year was extremely positive, with a 100% success rate: 718 students trained in 20 schools on 39 training courses. Andbank hopes that the same levels of achievement will be achieved during this school year.

According to Josep Pol, president of the Andorran Red Cross, “we think it is really important to train future citizens so they have the basic knowledge to be able to respond in an emergency situation”. He went on to add that Andorra leads the way in first aid training and has exported the project to other countries, such as Monaco, Luxembourg and Lichtenstein, through the International Red Cross.

He also explained that “it is calculated that if almost the entire world population was trained in first aid, between 64,000 and 70,000 people would be able to save lives in risk situations thanks to the knowledge of those trained on these courses.”

This is the third year of collaboration between the two entities.