From Aloysius Attah, Onitsha
• Mrs Soludo presenting first aid kit to participant
Wife of the Anambra State governor, Dr Nonye Soludo, is leading a campaign for healthy living especially in the state.
She recently inaugurated ‘Healthy Living Club’ with headteachers, teachers and students/pupils drawn from about 325 primary and secondary schools across the 21 Local Government Areas of the state as members.
At the event in Awka, she explained that the central focus was to guide the students and teenagers on the routines for healthy, sound and happy life by building an army of healthy living enthusiasts, adding that every school child in Anambra must be fully involved in the movement: “We are aiming to inculcate a healthy living revolution that cannot be quenched. What we want to achieve is a culture of health consciousness among our pupils. A mindset of change, being conscious of one’s body is the first step to achieving the right health. I describe it as being selfish with your body.
“Living right does not cost a fortune. It is all about simple and deliberate habits that define one’s approach to a healthy life. It begins with what you eat and how you take care of your body. I prefer to use the slogan ‘You are what you eat.’ The bottom line is that if you do not understand what goes into your mouth, your body will not.
“Healthy living is a very conscious practice. You must make up your mind to sacrifice certain unhealthy habits that do not go well with your body formula. You must understand that to live healthy is to live happy.”
She further tasked the teachers and other ambassadors to carry out the duty with the greatest commitment, reminding them that as ambassadors in the project, their responsibility is to groom the teenagers in line with the standards set by the club: “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 pupils.”
She disclosed that there would also be a “Healthy living garden competition” which will be a termly challenge across all the schools where club is domiciled with the objective of promoting purely organic crop planting methods among the teenagers.
Executive Chairman, Anambra State Universal Basic Education Board (ASUBEB), Dr. Vera Nwadinobi, stated that the ambassadors were carefully selected to propagate the programme in their various schools: “If we catch them young with respect to healthy living then the society will be full of healthy adults and youths who are ready to contribute to the welfare and development of the society and Anambra State in particular.”
Complete first aid kits were presented to all the ambassadors.