Essay 1

Health Promoting Schools (HPS)

World Health Organization (WHO) describes a health promoting school as one that constantly
strengthens its capacity as a healthy setting for living, learning and working. It is where members of the
school community work together to provide students with positive experiences and structures
that promote and protect their health which is beneficial in cultivating healthy adults later on .
Not only are those but HPS are far more advantageous as will be discussed in the essay below.

To begin with, the major focus of a HPS is to improve the health and wellbeing of students
through a “whole-of-school” approach. In Fiji, it is described as an approach aiming to
institutionalize wellness in all schools in Fiji through an enabling environment and multisectorial
partnership to ensure that children achieve their optimal growth and development. This in return
aims to foster lifelong healthy habits in children in all aspects of life such as physical, emotional
and social. To exemplify, it aims to strengthen student participation in physical education
classes, promote healthy diet and healthy eating habits and decrease drugs ,stress and
depression.

Moving on, the impacts of HPS are many. Firstly it enhances the physical, mental and social
health of the whole school community, improves academic achievement, enhances student
engagement, develops healthier positive attitude and leads to better school attendance.

The improved home, school and community partnership, more parental involvement in school,
higher staff morale’s leading to productivity are also some of the advantageous few. On the
other hand, decreased behavioral issues in the classroom and compound is also an advantage

In addition, the healthy canteen guideline, healthy food initiative, fruit days and compulsory physical
education classes are some of the many initiatives taken by health promoting schools. The others
include awareness and campaigns on drugs, diseases and disasters.

However, the implementation process is not always smooth. Similarly, teachers also face challenges in
the above. These include insufficient financial and material resources, lack of skill and knowledge of
implementers and weak community and parental participation. To exemplify, a student who may be
learning about healthy diet at school must be indulging in the opposite at home, or teachers only limit it
to only one fruit day per week instead of asking students to consume fruits every day.

Overall, health promoting schools are indeed a great initiative but have to be implemented wisely with
adequate training and support from government agencies.
ESSAY 2

HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS

A relationship is a close connection between two people. There are many types of relationships. While
some are healthy, some are unhealthy. The different relationship types will be further explored in this
essay.

To start off, healthy relationships involve honesty, trust, respect and open communication between
partners and they take effort and compromise from both people. There is no imbalance of power.
Partners respect each other's independence, can make their own decisions without fear of retribution or
retaliation, and share decisions. To exemplify, discussing your partner’s negative habits without any fear
with them is a sign of a healthy relationship.

Apart from healthy, there are other types of relationships. These include family, casual, friendship and
romantic relationships. Family relationship is between domestic groups of people with some degree of
kinship – whether through blood, marriage, or adoption eg mother –son. Friendship is with a person one
knows well and regard with affection, trust, and respect eg a classmate. Casual is defined as (unplanned)
whereby relationships are formed with people one encounter s every day with anyone who is not a
friend, romantic relationship, or family member. However, as these relationships expand they can either
turn out to be healthy or unhealthy or abusive.

A healthy relationship is when two people develop a connection based on trust, support, respect,
equality, compassion, loyalty and communication. Signs include Comfortable Pace, whereby the
relationship happens at a pace that feels comfortable to both parties, trust, believing that both parties
will not do anything to hurt the other, honesty which is being truthful and open with each other,
independence, responsibility, respect and equality. In short, in healthy relationships both partners are
committed and equally responsible for each other.

Contrastively, an abusive relationship is one relationship which involves mistreatment, disrespect,

intense jealousy, controlling behavior, or physical violence. Signs of these are different to the ones
mentioned above and includes violence of all types, possessiveness, jealousy, threats and put downs. To
exemplify, physical abuse, swearing, threats are all signs of abusive relationships.

In conclusion, no relationship is perfect and all undergo some sort of problems. These can be solved
through communication, healthy arguments, not keeping stringent expectations, mutual discussions and
counseling. Whatever, be the issue it is important to keep calm and remember that abuse is not the
solution.