Michael Embraces “Learn to Be Healthy and Be Healthy to Learn”

Michael has been attending Save the Children’s School Health and Nutrition (SHN) program since the first grade.

Michael is a 13–year-old old boy from Taha village in Minya, Egypt. He is the oldest among his three siblings and his father works at a gas station. Michael has been attending Save the Children’s School Health and Nutrition (SHN) program since the first grade.

Under the motto of "Learn to be Healthy and be Healthy to Learn," the SHN program’s goal is to improve both the health status of children and their performance at school. Targeting 30,000 students aged 6-15 years, the program aims at achieving coordination and integration with government offices interested in child health, identifying and treating conditions that may result in weak accomplishments at school and raising the health awareness of school children and their community.

Amongst his friends, Michael is known as the “handy man.”

“I like to fix things, and play around with broken objects until I repair them. I really enjoy restoring old shoes and making new shoes. I have a dream of opening up my own shoe store one day,” he says. Michael has hopes that math classes will help him with the accounting skills that are needed to manage his shop.

The goal of the SHN program “Learn to be Healthy and be Healthy to Learn” is to improve both the health status of children and their performance at school.

In computer class Michael enjoys developing programs with his teacher. “I did my first computer presentation on the dangers of Bird Flu. I used this program to educate my classmates on how to detect if your chicken is sick.” Michael also participates in the Health Parliament at his school. The Health Parliament consists of a number of children meeting together and discussing health concerns at school with the local health department.

Michael explains “At the Parliament we [the students] have the ability to express our concerns and our opinions are actually taken into consideration.  For example we had concerns about the uncovered canals near school and so did our teachers. Within a few months the local health department covered the canals to make our school environment safer.”