Her
Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah visited the Prince Abdullah bin Al Hussein
Secondary School “Back to School” health event in Dleil on 4 September 2019,
that included activities related to the Healthy School program of the Royal
Health Awareness Society (RHAS), and involving students, teachers and parents.
During the visit, Her Majesty engaged with students during a tour of the health fair activities, such as interactive drawing of oral hygiene, story-telling about the importance of drinking water, sports challenges, and free medical tests and awareness sessions focused on healthy nutrition and anemia.
Her Majesty also met with the students’ parents who expressed the positive impact that the Healthy School Accreditation program has had on their children’s wellbeing in general and the benefits of the healthy meals provided for their children through the school feeding program and how their awareness has been raised through nutrition education sessions.
The school’s principal stated that the school achieved the Gold Level accreditation of the Healthy School program, and has been implementing several of the RHAS health awareness projects such as Ajyal Salima, Think First, Water Education, and is included in the Healthy Kitchen Project/ School Feeding Program of the World Food Program and the Ministry of Education and implemented by RHAS.
Her Majesty then visited the healthy kitchen operations of the Dleil Women Association for Special Needs and met the field coordinators and the women employed by the project, who reiterated the importance of the project in terms of providing nutritional meals for their children, as well as providing job opportunities that enable the women to support their families. The healthy kitchen was established in Al Dhleil area, in collaboration with and support of the WFP and the Royal Health Awareness Society in 2017. It provides healthy meals to 4,750 students in the area and was able to provide about 25 direct jobs, mostly to women.
Following the kitchen visit, Queen Rania visited the Vocational Training Center for Persons with Disabilities within the Association, where she was briefed on the training opportunities and various programs in the center available for the persons with disabilities and how they are being integrated into the society. The Association director explained that the income generated from the healthy kitchen is reinvested into such activities to maximize community’s benefit.
The Healthy Kitchen Project is part of the MOE and WFP School Feeding Program, and is currently being implemented by RHAS in 11 community based organizations across Jordan. The number of schools benefiting from the healthy kitchen meals since its inception in 2015 has reached 283 schools, while the number of students reached about 57,500, receiving healthy meals on daily basis. The project has created 315 direct job opportunities, mostly for women from local communities.
As for the Healthy Schools program, 241 schools across Jordan have
participated in the program for the academic year 2018/2019. Upon evaluation, a
111 schools were accredited as Healthy Schools at three levels: 26 schools at
the Gold level, 27 schools at the Silver level, and