Yalla Natural celebrates Qatar National Day

Thousands of children visited the Yalla Natural trailer and learned about healthy lifestyles as WCM-Q’s health campaign celebrated Qatar National Day.

Yalla Natural, which is part of the wider community campaign Sahtak Awalan – Your Health First, was invited to participate in the Qatar Foundation tent at Darb Al Saai as part of the National Day celebrations.

Along with the Yalla Natural truck, visitors were able to plant their own fruit and vegetable seeds and make their own healthy smoothies on the blender bikes.

Dr. Javaid Sheikh, dean of WCM-Q, said it was a great honor to be able to celebrate Qatar National Day at Darb Al Saai, and a wonderful opportunity to take the message about healthy lifestyles to the community.

Dr. Sheikh said: “WCM-Q’s Yalla Natural truck has been inundated with children and young people and while they are having fun on the blender bikes or planting their own vegetable seeds, we are able to offer lessons about living a healthy life that they will hopefully take into adulthood. We want to help create a healthy generation who unlock their potential and are able to meet the goals of Qatar National Vision 2030.”

Visitors were also able to see cookery demonstrations that transformed healthy ingredients into delicious meal suitable for all the family. Parents could also take away recipe cards to try at home.

In all, Yalla Natural was visited by thousands of schoolchildren along with their teachers, and they were full of praise for the campaign.

Victoria Horsburgh, a physical education teacher at Awsaj Academy at QF, said: “Health issues are obviously so important for our children. We have a high rate of diabetes in Qatar so we we try to educate the children as much as we can about making healthy choices and coming to places like this where they learn about health and where the lessons are in both Arabic and English is really important and good for them.”

Laila Hussain, resources director at Assalam School, said the Your Health First campaign had been a huge help to the school in helping to improve the health of the students.

She said: “We talk about nutrition and health to the students and explain why good health is important. The children are very interested and initiatives like Your Health First help a lot. Today we have taken Yalla Natural recipes that the children can cook and with Project Greenhouse, the children have been planting fruit and vegetable seeds and learning about their importance in their daily life.”

Teacher David Knippa, of English Modern School, said that campaigns like Your Health First and the Yalla Natural initiative were valuable as they raised awareness of health issues in the students’ consciousness.

He said health education was taken very seriously at the school, with children constantly reminded about the importance of eating fruit and vegetables and avoiding foods high in fat and sugar.

Mr Knippa added: “We teach them about the food pyramid and the kind of things that they should be eating. We do our best and I show them the fruit and vegetables that I eat on a daily basis to encourage them.”