A lesson in CPR can reach far beyond the child who learns it. It can reach a family, a school and, one day, a person who needs help.
Greece has historically been reported among the European countries with the lowest survival after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. KIDS SAVE LIVES (KSL) addresses this longstanding public health challenge by making lifesaving knowledge and practical support more widely accessible.
Our ongoing work in 2025–2026 aimed to remove barriers to learning, involve families and communities, and help more people contribute to the chain of survival. Children are at the heart of this ambition: a generation learning that caring for others includes knowing how to help.
Schools are our starting point because learning there can reach across generations. Free cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and first-aid education allows children to learn without a participation fee. Parents and teachers can carry that message into the wider community. More than 600 volunteer instructors support the programme, while community courses create further opportunities for adults to develop their skills.
The innovation is the connection between education, access and participation. The National AED Map helps people locate automated external defibrillators, the Rescue Map supports community responders, and the free iSAVElives app offers emergency guidance, AED navigation and alerts to certified responders. Lifesaving knowledge is linked to resources people can use before professional help arrives.
Awareness encourages people to take the first step. The 2025 national CPR record engaged 60.650 students in a mass awareness event. Alongside dozens of other events, social media, educational videos and real rescue stories helped bring the importance of early action into public conversation. Ongoing education gives people the opportunity to turn that interest into practical skills.
This approach makes schools, families, workplaces and volunteers partners in community health. Its potential to grow comes from connecting local participation with shared learning and digital resources, so that each new group can strengthen the wider effort.
To date, KSL has trained 500.000 students across 5.050 Greek schools (equivalent in number to roughly two-thirds of Greece’s primary and general secondary schools), alongside 160.000 adults, including parents, teachers and company employees. These are cumulative achievements of the continuing programme.
More than 5.000 new first responders earn European Resuscitation Council certification each year through our Basic Life Support and Paediatric Basic Life Support programmes.
At submission, approximately 3.500 defibrillators are registered on the National AED Map, and iSAVElives has around 45.000 users.
Across its history, KSL has documented 44 people resuscitated following out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in incidents where its trained community and wider response network contributed.
The public health value lies in widening access to lifesaving knowledge and linking it with practical support. Every trained student carries that possibility into adulthood. Our ambition is a society where the chance of receiving immediate help depends less on luck and more on what we have taught one another.
