Back to School with Your Health First

Children across the country returned to school with a passion for health, thanks to a partnership between Sahtak Awalan – Your Health First and the Ministry for Education and Higher Education.

The schoolbags contained gifts to help children learn more about health.

As part of the Ministry of Education’s Back to School program, Your Health First distributed thousands of school bags, lunchboxes, water bottles, pencil cases and food information cards to young students at the Mall of Qatar over the Eid Al Adha period. The gifts were branded with the Sahtak Awalan – Your Health First campaign, an initiative of WCM-Q. The campaign aims to change unhealthy habits into healthy behaviors, and educate a generation about the importance of diet and exercise. The food cards explain the nutritional benefits of a wide variety of different foods, helping parents and young people to plan healthy meals and understand the benefits of the foods they are eating.

Nesreen Al-Rifai, Chief Communications Officer at WCM-Q, said: “The partnership between the Back to School campaign and Sahtak Awalan is so important for our children and young people. If we can educate our children about health at a young age, they will take those lessons with them into later life. In that way, we can help create a healthy generation in the future who are able to meet the goals of Qatar National Vision 2030.

The partnership between the Back to School campaign and Sahtak Awalan will help children and young people take care of their own health.

“I would like to thank everyone for their support with this, particularly the Ministry of Education but also our strategic partners; Qatar Foundation, the Ministry of Public Health, Occidental Petroleum Qatar and ExxonMobil who offer such valuable help.

“Obesity and related disorders are diseases from which we must do all we can to protect our children, but by working together we are making a real difference to the health of our most precious asset – our young people.”

Along with the nutrition cards, the water bottles will help ensure that the students returning to school stay well-hydrated throughout the day, and a magnetic food guide for the refrigerator will serve as a reminder at home about the importance of diet in staying fit and healthy.

WCM-Q and its Sahtak Awalan – Your Health First campaign, has already done much to educate children about health, having installed greenhouses at public schools so the pupils could learn to grow and then eat their own fresh, organic fruit and vegetables. Once again, that project could not have been realized without collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, and the backing of Sahtak Awalan’s strategic partners.