MANILA, Philippines – Prevalent malnutrition among Filipino children is what prompts Nestle Philippines Inc., maker of Bear Brand Powdered Milk Drink, to establish the “Laki sa Gatas” nutrition education advocacy.
Drinking milk as part of a healthy diet is one of the campaign’s key messages.
Laki sa Gatas has visited over 2,700 schools across the country and has reached out to more than 1.2 million schoolchildren since it started three years ago. And in all these visits, the teachers were the ones who served as bridges to facilitate the advocacy.
This is why Laki sa Gatas considers teachers as a vital part of its nutrition advocacy.
“Teachers are one of our children’s main sources of knowledge when it comes to nutrition,” says Eugene David, business executive manager of Nestle Philippines Inc.’s Dairy, Health and Nutrition Solutions Business Unit.
At school, teachers help kids learn the importance of good nutritional habits, such as drinking milk and eating the right amounts of Go, Grow, and Glow foods every day.
They also work hand-in-hand with parents to help them reinforce these habits at home.
With such a big responsibility, it is important for teachers to be always well informed about different nutrition strategies and the most relevant knowledge on children’s nutrition.
To help promote nutrition education, Laki sa Gatas conducts seminars for teachers on how to address malnutrition and provides them with tips on how to make teaching proper nutrition more fun and engaging for children.
“Both the children and their parents perceive teachers as highly reliable sources of information,” David explains. “So that makes it easier to effectively get our message across children and their families.”
And because children spend a lot of time with their teachers, they can constantly impress upon the students the value of following good nutritional practices. Once these practices become children’s habits, the country’s malnutrition problems would be significantly reduced.
David adds: “It is often the lack of information, and not poverty, which causes inadequate nutrition among our children.” Thanks to these valuable teachers, the Laki sa Gatas nutrition education advocacy is a big step closer to ensuring that the next generation of Filipinos would be healthier.