In a renewed effort to engender a consciousness of healthy food consumption and positive lifestyle among students in Anambra State, the wife of the State Governor, Mrs Nonye Soludo, on Friday, flagged off the community and school gardens initiative in secondary schools across the state.
The flag-off ceremony, which was held at the state headquarters of the Post Primary Schools Service Commission, PPSSC, in Awka, also witnessed the inauguration of Healthy Living Schools Ambassadors in one hundred selected schools by the governor’s wife.
The initiatives are all driven by the first lady’s Healthy Living pet project, with the vision to entrench a culture of healthy and purposeful lifestyle among the people.
The Anambra governor’s wife explained that the Healthy Living Garden Programme is targeted at getting the students early in life to embrace agriculture, imbibe hard work, and love charity, by recognizing the importance of maintaining a garden from where they would get common staple crops needed daily in the family.
She also spoke of the Pad Bank initiative launched two years ago in schools by her pet project, regretting that the schools have not maximized the gains of such initiative.
“I am not very pleased with the operation of the pad banks in our schools because, since two years ago when we launched this initiative, we have not had schools coming to request the restocking of their banks.
“We recognize how critical this initiative is towards the sanitary hygiene of our young school girls and even the teachers, and we want the school principals and the healthy living ambassadors to utilize this initiative maximally. We are willing to provide sanitary pads for any school that requests it,” she noted.
Inaugurating the ambassadors of the initiatives, Mrs Soludo said they have been carefully selected because of their capacities, appealing to the principals of the schools to lend consistent support to the Ambassadors.
She said, “It’s really important to keep emphasizing that healthy living is a crucial way of life. Our relationship with the body will ultimately define what it gives back. If you feed it well, it gives you wellness. If you feed it badly, it gives you sickness.
“That is the ideology we want to instil in the minds of our students. Healthy Living with Nonye Soludo is designed to give every student a platform to succeed. Each club member carries an identity of difference. That is why we insist that one of the requirements for being a club member is cleanliness. Members of the club must stick to its foundational norms, always.
‘So, as a Teacher Ambassador, those responsibilities fall on your shoulders. Whether we succeed or fail in this quest is in your hands. But we must succeed.”
Earlier in her address, the Chairman of the State PPSSC, Prof Nkechi Ikediugwu said the launch of the initiatives by the governor’s wife speaks to her commitment to the welfare, growth and development of the Anambra child.
Acknowledging the immense benefits that can be derived from the initiatives, Ikediugwu said starting early to equip the students with such knowledge and ideologies will ensure that they grow into responsible and healthy adults.
She further expressed appreciation to the governor’s wife for the recruitment of blind teachers into the Commission, adding that the Commission today has 28 blind teachers, who are teaching in schools in the state.
Ikediugwu revealed that the Free Education Policy of the State Government is yielding result, with the population of students in schools in the state going up astronomically, adding that the PPSSC in collaboration with LGA mayors has began enforcement of the free education policy, where children found hawking and doing all kinds of odd things on the streets were picked up and registered in the schools.
The PPSSC boss gave the assurance of the schools’ principals and the commission that they will support the healthy living initiatives as well as other laudable programmes initiated by the government for the benefit of students and teachers.
In their separate remarks, the State Commissioner for Health, Dr Afam Obidike, and the State Commissioner for Local Government, Mr TonyCollins Nwabunwanne said the initiatives of the governor’s wife were designed to touch lives from the grassroots, observing that with their meticulous implementation, a whole lot of things going wrong in the families and the society can be corrected.
Some of the school principals who received agricultural support equipment, sanitary pads, and other essentials for their schools during the event expressed gratitude to Mrs Soludo and the Anambra State Government, promising to give their best to ensure the success of the initiatives.
