PARIS – New Balance has donated $160,000 for a new riverside trail linking the high school to the middle school.

“I really do believe the New Balance Foundation is targeting childhood obesity to get people established early in their lives eating properly and being active,” said Pat Cook, a senior vice president at Stephens Memorial Hospital. In September, she applied for the grant on behalf of Western Maine Health, the local health care umbrella group that includes the hospital.

She said the placement of the path – between the two schools – is in line with the foundation’s mission to target young people. The foundation is the charitable arm of New Balance Athletic Shoe Inc., which has a factory in Norway and a retail store in Oxford.

Its corporate offices are located in Boston, and it has manufacturing facilities in Massachusetts and Maine.

Amy Vreeland, a spokeswoman for New Balance, said, “We focus on giving in Maine and Massachusetts because that is where our associates live and work.”

In November, the shoe company gave $500,000 toward an $11 million project that will connect Bethel to Moosehead Lake, a span of 180 miles, with a trail and overnight huts.

The trail grants are part of the company’s focus on combating childhood obesity, Vreeland said.

Cook said she has contracted with the Maine Conservation Corps to build the trail next spring, with a completion date late next summer or early fall. The trail will hook up with the Viking Trail near Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School and another trail at Oxford Hills Middle School. The whole pathway will be just over one mile. Because the path will run along a steep embankment at times, fencing will be constructed as well.

The trail will be covered with gravel, then overlaid with stone dust that packs down to create a smooth surface, according to Ken Morse of Healthy Oxford Hills, which is part of Western Maine Health.

He said he anticipates the grant will pay for the entire trail, but if the budget does go over, he said Western Maine Health would cover the extra costs. “We’re pretty comfortable that we’re pretty close,” he said.

Morse said that the trail designer for Maine Conservation Corps, Lester Kenway, told him that he thought the trail – which will run high above the Little Androscoggin River – will be “very beautiful, especially for a site so close to a downtown area.”