A pair of tooth trolls will be touring schools across the capital espousing the wisdom of dental hygiene to hundreds of youngsters following a Big Lottery Fund announcement today.

Karius and Baktus are part of the Dental Health in Action project that is bringing a play to twelve deprived boroughs educating children about the need to brush, floss and eat healthily.

The award is comes from BIG’s Reaching Communities programme that supports a variety of innovative projects designed to build better communities across England.

Little Troll Productions have been running the Karius and Baktus (named after caries and bacteria) show since 2005, and the story of the rascally trolls, who are germs that live inside the tooth cavity of a little boy in London, has already achieved great success in raising awareness about dental health.

The £112,248 lottery grant will extend the play’s reach allowing it to run for the next three years.  The show is targeted at children aged four to eight years old – the stage they start shedding their baby teeth and begin developing awareness about the need to look after their chompers.

The story was first published in Norway in 1949 and is extremely popular in Scandinavia. Besides witnessing the adventures of the cheeky trolls, after the performance children can ask Karius and Baktus questions while also receiving a goody-bag with dental promotion material.

‘’I love the story, because it manages to really touch the imagination of children, it encourages them to expand their imagination to visualize what may be happening on the micro level in all living things, and it is highly educational,’’ said Little Troll director Ragga Gudmundsdottir.

‘’There has been a lot more discussion in society about poor diet jeopardizing children’s health from a very young age, and people recognise our project is another step in combating the problem.’’

Debbie Pippard, Big Lottery Fund Head of Region for London, said: “The award is an excellent example of how the Reaching Communities programme is making a huge difference to vital organisations across the capital. Projects like Karius and Backtus are providing imaginative solutions to an issue affecting countless children in our city.’’

Another Reaching Communities recipient, The Lorrimore Centre, will use its £492,098 grant to tackle mental health issues affecting residents in Southwark.

The Lorrimore Creative Therapies Project (LCTP) will provide free therapeutic interventions including creative workshops and counselling to cater for the diverse range of backgrounds in the borough.

LCTP will enable more vulnerable people suffering mental ill health to access free services as cost, illness and not having English as their first language has acted as barriers to receiving treatment. Counselling will be provided in the native tongue of many participants.

The Lorrimore had an overwhelming response about the need for the LCTP from diverse organisations including community groups and service users groups throughout the Borough. This response, combined with 20 years of experience of providing mental health services to vulnerable people, proved the need to provide a range of services that will improve people’s emotional wellbeing and psychological health.

Further information

Big Lottery Fund Press Office: 020 7211 1888
Out of hours contact: 07867 500 572
Public Enquiries Line: 08454 102 030
Textphone:  0845 6021 659
Full details of the Big Lottery Fund programmes and grant awards are available on the website at www.biglotteryfund.org.uk

Notes to Editors

• The Big Lottery Fund rolls out close to £2 million in Lottery good cause money every 24 hours which together with other Lottery distributors means that across the UK most people are within a few miles of a Lottery-funded project.
• The Big Lottery Fund, the largest of the National Lottery good cause distributors, has been rolling out grants to health, education, environment and charitable causes across the UK since its inception in June 2004. It was established by Parliament on 1 December 2006.
• Since the National Lottery began in 1994, 28p from every pound spent by the public has gone to Good Causes. As a result, over £20 billion has now been raised and more than 250,000 grants given out across the arts, sport, heritage, charities, health, education and the environment.