General Electric Healthcare Education Zone Celebrates Five Years

(3BL Media / theCSRfeed) Cardiff, UK – December 15, 2011 - Year six pupils at Radyr Primary School together with Professor John Harries, Chief Scientific Adviser for Wales, last week helped GE Healthcare to celebrate the fifth anniversary of its Education Zone at the Maynard Centre in Whitchurch, Cardiff. 
Since it opened in autumn 2006 more than 7,500 Key Stage 2 children from over 70 schools have benefitted from GE Healthcare’s hands-on approach to science education. To celebrate the occasion and to thank Radyr Primary school for its on-going support, GE Healthcare presented the school with £300 worth of science equipment, including an ‘Understanding Electricity Kit’ which provides everything children need to build their own electrical circuit to understand how electricity works and what it can do.

Chief Scientific Adviser for Wales, Professor John Harries, said: “It’s been a privilege to share this milestone for GE Healthcare’s Education Zone. The centre provides a much valued service to schools both locally and further afield and does a great job of engaging young students with science. GE, and the excellent team running this activity, are to be commended: this is a top class outreach facility, providing a great service to science in Wales.”

With its state-of-the-art teaching laboratory and classroom, the Education Zone is the perfect environment for young students to take part in informative discussions and gain hands-on experience of science.

Radyr Primary School Head Teacher, Jonathan Bussy, added: “The Education Zone does a fantastic job of creating an interesting learning environment for the children. Our school has been visiting ever since the Education Zone first opened and the children always thoroughly enjoy themselves. They especially love getting to try out experiments in the lab. GE Healthcare’s gift is very generous and I know everyone is already looking forward to learning more about electricity using our new equipment.”

Julie Alcock, Schools Science Coordinator for The Maynard Centre, said: “We are thrilled that Professor Harries and Radyr Primary School have come to celebrate our fifth birthday with us and visit our Education Zone. GE Healthcare is a key employer in Wales and we are committed to giving back to the local community. We hope that through offering lessons at our Education Zone we are helping to form scientists of the future.”

GE Healthcare’s Education Zone offers schools four types of lessons to choose from – ranging from fingerprinting to yeast / micro-organisms – all of which are linked to the National Curriculum. The most popular experiment for schools is Chromatography; the process of separating different components from a mixture to get a pure product, and one used by scientists the world over, working in many different fields. The experiment on offer at GE Healthcare’s Education Zone involves separating the different coloured inks which combine to create various felt tip pens.

ABOUT GE HEALTHCARE
GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our broad expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies, performance improvement and performance solutions services help our customers to deliver better care to more people around the world at a lower cost. In addition, we partner with healthcare leaders, striving to leverage the global policy change necessary to implement a successful shift to sustainable healthcare systems. Our “healthymagination” vision for the future invites the world to join us on our journey as we continuously develop innovations focused on reducing costs, increasing access and improving quality around the world. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employees are committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries.

For more information about GE Healthcare, visit our website at www.gehealthcare.com.

GE Healthcare in Wales
The company employs around 470 people at The Maynard Centre in Cardiff. The 30-acre site at Forest Farm near Whitchurch was opened in 1980. Since then, the Maynard Centre has supplied materials to customers across the globe, ranging from multinational pharmaceutical companies to individual research institutes and universities. The company manufactures over 1000 different products that aid research into key diseases.

The Local Community & Education
The company has a strong commitment to local community projects and to local schools in the Cardiff area, providing financial contributions and regular support. Each year, GE Healthcare’s Cardiff site donates thousands of pounds to local primary and infant schools which use the money to purchase teaching aids such as IT equipment, books and laptops. Some schools have also used the funding to improve their outdoor learning and play areas. This year GE Healthcare has donated almost £8,000 to ten local primary schools. GE Healthcare has an on-site Education Zone which gives local primary school groups the opportunity to use a purpose built laboratory to take part in scientific experiments. This has proved very popular with local teachers and pupils alike with the total number of pupils participating exceeding 7,500. The Education Zone complements the site’s Science Resource Library - a free service enabling local teachers to borrow science resources for their classrooms for a few weeks at a time.

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