Education

Every child has the right to an education. Nonetheless, a significant number of primary school age children cannot attend school every year. Education is a crucial factor in eradicating poverty and inequality. It plays a key role in human development and teaches invaluable life skills, including prevention of diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS. Schools can also be a source for nutritional supplements and vaccines.

Through our charitable contributions, we strive to ensure access to schooling for children living in communities where we do business, and to improve the quality of education from primary school to university and beyond. This includes improving teachers' competencies and building new schools. We do not get involved in the content of educational programs, leaving that to the experts who run the programs. It goes without saying that none of the programs we support involve cigarette branding of any sort.

Here are some of the programs we support to improve education in schools:

• In Russia, we fund a program that trains hundreds of school teachers from across the country each year at the Federal Academy for educators in Moscow;
• In the Philippines, we fund an innovative school-based TV program to reinforce classroom instruction at public elementary schools;
• In China, we fund school construction in poor rural parts of the country;
• In Argentina, we fund two educational programs. “Porvenir” provides training and tools to help teachers work with children and their families to instill in them the importance of education and ensure tobacco farm children stay in school and out of tobacco fields. “Somos Capaces” is a vocational training program that provides skills and jobs for unemployed young adults who are no longer in school;
• In Colombia, we fund a program in cooperation with the Ministry of Education that is renovating rural public schools and introducing an improved teaching curriculum for children in farm communities;
• In Poland, we support integration centers that give disabled people information and tools to live and work independently;
• And in Germany, we support a program which helps give students in vocational training the tools they need for the professional world;
• In Malawi, we are supporting a multi-year sustainability initiative part of which includes funding the construction of 100 schools over a five-year period.