Grenada’s CARICOM Youth Ambassadors Amanda Scott and Judd Cadet have embarked on several activities to promote health and wellness among young people in their country.
The CYAs collaborated with local and national stakeholders in hosting the activities. The CYAs hosted a Fruit Day at the St.George’s Methodist Primary school where every student replaced their routine snacks with fresh fruits for the day. The fruits were supplied by Marketing Board, Grenada’s largest supplier of locally-grown produce. The school’s management board expressed a vested interest in the initiative by aborting the regular sales of ‘snacks’ supplied by the school’s cafeteria and instead sold fruits to encourage students to make better food choices.
The CYAs also organised a health and fitness walk in the parish of St. Mark where there was participation of scores of young people who understood the importance of being healthy, and the co-relation and huge dependence good health has on their level of productivity in their respective capacities.
The Youth Ambassadors also promoted healthy challenges, including a two-week limited-calorie diet, reduced alcohol intake, fruit and vegetable diet, two-hour meditation and visit-a-doctor-day. Participants said they were happy to be involved in the initiatives and shared their experiences via photos and posts in various social media spaces.
The CYAs said they would like to see the practices become habitual rather than trendy. They said they hoped to help create and maintain a healthy population in Grenada. According to them a youthful, healthy population is a wealthy population.
