DepEd providing nutritious meals to underfed school kids

MANILA, Philippines - The Department of Education (DepEd) is providing more than 42,000 nutritious meals to underfed school children to keep them from dropping out of school by addressing malnutrition and improving school performance.

Education Secretary Armin Luistro said the DepEd’s School-Based Feeding Program (SBFP) started last October 2012 and will continue up to March 2013 to provide nutritious meals to selected pupils suffering from severe malnutrition for 100 to 120 feeding days.

“Our specific target here are children who come to school on an empty stomach which results to absenteeism or poor school performance. This short-term hunger syndrome is observed among public elementary school children who do not eat breakfast or walk long hours to reach school,” Luistro explained.

Initially called breakfast feeding program, it was renamed SBFP so that the food distribution will not be limited to breakfast so that schools could decide what time to conduct the feeding program that will best address the nutritional needs of learners.

It targets some 42,372 kindergarten to Grade 6 pupils that were identified as “severely wasted” children based on the nutritional status report of Aug. 31, 2012.

It aims to rehabilitate at least 70 percent of the severely wasted beneficiaries to normal nutritional status at the end of the feeding days.

“At the end of the day, we want these target school children to improve their classroom attendance to up to 100 percent by improving their health and nutrition,” Luistro added.

The SBFP developed standardized recipes using malunggay and a 20-day cycle menu utilizing vegetables locally grown in school gardens.

Schools not identified as SBFP beneficiaries could collaborate with the local government unit, non-government organizations, parent-teachers associations and other community stakeholders for the implementation of similar feeding programs.