Imperial Logistics drives Covid health education in underprivileged schools

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Be safe. Be smart provides easy-to-understand healthcare education and includes the installation of sanitiser stations and posters at the schools.

"As a business that provides essential goods and services, we felt it critical to influence better health and wellness management to one of the most vulnerable groups in our society - our children. This has meant supporting underprivileged schools with education and by providing access to sanitisation - both crucial to curbing the spread of this disease," says Mohammed Akoojee, Imperial Group CEO.

Empowering the youth

"By utilising the footprint we already have in the schools through our road safety programme, we promote efficient hygiene measures and precautions in the school environment by encouraging and educating learners to wash and sanitise hands frequently, to use protective face masks at all times, avoid touching their eyes, mouth, or nose with unwashed hands and practicing cough and sneeze etiquette - as well as social distancing."

The outreach includes education in the form of a simple but catchy song, and enables learners to understand and retain the fundamentals of these aspects in a memorable way, as well as being able to share this information back home with their family and friends.

"We have already reached 43 schools and interacted with 302 classes. With travel restrictions lifting we are now able to extend this reach beyond Gauteng to the Free State and KwaZulu-Natal provinces – extending our help to teachers and learners as they navigate this new and challenging environment," says Akoojee.

Imperial has thus far distributed 1,075 litres of sanitiser, 430 dispenser units, 430 posters and visited 8,779 learners through the initiative to date – driving the power of an active, successful education campaign as rapidly as possible, and fundamentally creating a generation of safe and smart South Africans, empowered with Covid-19 relevant information.

"This is just the start," enthuses Akoojee. "We are committed to continuing this programme as long as possible - to reaching and assisting as many young South Africans as possible – which is part of a much larger CSI mix where we aim to empower the youth to be safe and be smart in all areas of their lives – be that road, health and wellness, or education," concludes Akoojee.