Queen chairs Royal Health Awareness Society board of trustees meeting

AMMAN — Her Majesty Queen Rania chaired the Royal Health Awareness Society’s (RHAS) annual board of trustees meeting on Monday during a visit to the Ballas Secondary School for Girls in Ajloun Governorate. 

The Queen and attending board members reviewed the progress of the society’s programmes, including Nestlé’s Ajyal Salima programme and the Healthy Kitchen Project, which are aimed at raising health awareness in schools across Jordan, according to a statement from Her Majesty’s office. 

The director of the society, Hanin Odeh, and Ballas Secondary School for Girls Principal Hanan Ayoub, welcomed Her Majesty to the school, where she joined other board members for the meeting.

During the meeting, Odeh reflected on the RHAS’ achievements over the past year, which were made possible through partnerships with the ministries of health and education, the private sector and international organisations. 

Her Majesty emphasised the importance of encouraging positive health practices and stressed the need to focus on maintaining the cleanliness of public areas and parks.

She said that this is only achievable through local campaigns to raise public awareness and counter harmful behaviours like littering. 

Odeh also expanded on the society’s priorities and future strategic plans for the upcoming year, highlighting the emphasis on developing existing programmes and assessing their impact and scale, in order to reach  a larger audience of beneficiaries. 

Her Majesty then visited the school’s first floor library, where she observed fourth and fifth graders from different schools across Ajloun, 70km northwest of Amman, take part in hands-on activities as part of Nestlé’s Ajyal Salima programme.  

The Queen also met with school teachers before crossing  the street to the Ballas Charitable Society, where she toured the Healthy Kitchen Project’s operations. 

At the society, Queen Rania was received by its president, Mohammad Ananbeh, who introduced Her Majesty to the local women working to produce healthy meals for schools in the area. 

The women described how beneficial the Healthy Kitchen Project has been in providing healthy meals to local school children and expressed how integral the project has been in generating employment opportunities for local women to support their families. 

RHAS is an initiative established by Queen Rania in 2005 to promote health awareness in Jordan and empower Jordanians to adopt healthy lifestyle options. The society implements programmes in alignment with national health priorities which are designed to respond to local community needs. 

The Nestlé’ Ajyal Salima programme and the Healthy Kitchen Project are two of the society’s initiatives which target school children, youth, and the wider Jordanian community.

The Ajyal Salima programme was first launched in Lebanon, in collaboration with the American University of Beirut’s School of Agriculture and Nutritional Sciences, in 2010, to promote nutritional awareness, healthy eating habits and an active lifestyle among school students.

In Jordan, the programme was launched through the RHAS in 2015, and has so far been implemented in 36 schools across Amman, Irbid, Madaba, Ajloun, Zarqa and Balqa governorates, targeting over 6,000 students and 115 teachers.

The Healthy Kitchen Project was launched by the RHAS in 2015 in partnership with the ministries of education and health and the World Food Programme. The project aims to provide healthy food alternatives to students by linking schools to productive kitchens within community-based organisations. 

The project has already generated 100 jobs for local women across Jordan. As part of the project, these women have received training on operations and meal production standards, as well as been taught basic financial literacy skills. 

The Ballas Secondary School for Girls was established in 2009 and currently has over 350 students between the fifth and twelfth grade.