Umniah partners up with RHAS to combat addiction

Umniah signed a partnership agreement with the Royal Health Awareness Society to support the “Tahseen” initiative through the “umnicoin” Rewards Program, which aims to prevent drug addiction by raising awareness among children and young people about the risks of addiction and smoking, as well as building their life skills and motivating them to engage in constructive activities. The agreement was signed by Ziad Shatara, Umniah CEO, and the Director General of the Royal Health Awareness Society, Hanin Odeh, in the presence of senior officials from both sides. Umniah has always been committed to supporting good causes and to encouraging its customers to donate through the umnicoin application. Over the past few years, the company has raised donations for the King Hussein Cancer Center, Tkiyet Um Ali and Al Aman Fund amongst others. Commenting on the agreement, Shatara said: “Umniah’s various Corporate Social Responsibility strategy tracks have been based upon support and empowerment of several sectors of society over the past few years. The signing of this partnership agreement with the Royal Health Awareness Society comes under these CSR tracks and aims to contribute to the promotion of positive values and the crushing of negative values such as drug addiction and smoking.” Shatara urged the company’s customers to donate to the “Tahseen” initiative and any CSR initiatives through the umnicoin application, launched in March last year to provide the best digital services and solutions to its customers, and to allow all subscribers of prepaid and postpaid customers to redeem points and exchange them with currencies with every use for any of the company’s services. Shatara expressed his appreciation for the efforts made by the Royal Health Awareness Society for implementing the various awareness-raising programs and their partners from the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health, the Drug Control Department, civil society organizations and other relevant institutions. Director-General of the Royal Health Awareness Society, Hanin Odeh, also highlighted the role of the Society in addressing youth through the “Tahseen” initiative, saying: “The Society is working on the principle of preventive health. The most important health issues that focus on society are protecting the children of Jordan and its youth from the scourge of drugs and the use of tobacco products of all kinds as well as smoking, through activities aimed at raising awareness and health behavior that focuses on social and life skills. These issues cannot be supported by one institution only and we thus appreciate the Umniah initiative to allow the Society to highlight the health issues of children and youth, as well as letting all Umniah customers to be able to offer assistance and enable us to expand such programs. Our partnership with Umniah will tackle several fronts and we are very excited to collaborate towards promoting a healthy Jordanian community.” The “Tahseen” initiative aims at preventing addiction by raising awareness among children and adolescents about the dangers of addiction and smoking, whereby three programs are implemented for different age groups. The first program consists of anti-smoking ambassadors for students from 9-11 years and aims to raise awareness about the hazards of smoking and encourage students to activate their role on public health law. The second program aims at educating young students from 12 to 14 years through interactive sessions to raise awareness about the dangers of drugs, smoking and alcohol as well as enhancing their life skills. The third is a peer education program targeting young people over the age of 18 that is implemented through cooperation with youth centers and is based on young men educating young men and young women educating young women. The number of participating schools partaking in these programs has reached 700 with nearly 140,000 students and more than 45 intellectuals coming from most parts of the Kingdom.