Behavioral Healthcare Center Launches ‘Stay Aware’ Campaign

Doha: The Behavioral Health Care Center, one of the centers of the Qatar Foundation for Social Work affiliated with the Ministry of Social Development and Family (MSDF), has launched an awareness campaign under the title of 'Stay Aware.' The campaign primarily targets 1,200 pupils of elementary schools annually in the field of good behavior and positive values and raising the behavioral awareness of pupils. The first phase of the campaign was implemented in collaboration with Qatar Scouts and Guides Association and Qatar Academy - Sidra Secondary School and featured three-day Puppet shows, with two plays for children. The first play focused on the notion of respect that targeted age groups from 6 to 9, with the second play focusing on reinforcing the notion of self-confidence and traits of the child leader that targeted age groups from 10 to 12. The campaign was also primarily intended to ingrain religious and moral values in the hearts of children and advance positive behavior. Director of Community Aware ness at the Behavioral Healthcare Center (Daam) Jawaher Abu Alfain said the campaign is the foremost awareness activity within the center's plans this year by virtue of a wide range of activities presented to children, such as awareness messages that help enhance behavioral health and promote moral and positive values. The puppet theatre has been implemented as an awareness-raising activity in schools, especially in elementary schools, because it can play a critical role in addressing the childrens feelings through professional scenarios and puppets, thus epitomizing the laid-out conversations consistently with movement of heads and hands. Admiration for doll characters leave profound impact on children's behavior and help them pursue the required ideas and social traditions, in addition to imbuing them with a variety of skills through indirect methods. The theatrical shows drew massive reaction from attendees whose number reached 450 pupils from both genders. The second phase of this campaign will be impl emented in the upcoming academic class through crafting interactive stories that best suit pre-school pupils as the most important pedagogical methods to relay indirect educational messages to children based on their ages, considering the dolls as an influential method. Moreover, Daam is committed to offering preventive and awareness-raising programs for children, young people and families, in pursuit of keeping up with evolution in media and social media platforms to generate awareness-raising literature with beneficial contents. Source: Qatar News Agency