13M Filipino kids live below poverty line

MANILA, Philippines - In a country where majority of the population lives below the poverty line, addressing children’s malnutrition remains a daunting challenge.

A study by the United Nations’ Children’s Education Fund (UNICEF) and the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) reveals that vast provincial areas are home to children living in poor conditions and have high malnourishment rate. Bicol has the highest with over 33.8 percent, closely followed by the Zamboanga Peninsula with 33.3 percent, MIMAROPA with 33.1 percent, Eastern Visayas with 32.1 percent, and Western Visayas with 31.9 percent.

Overall, the study finds that more than 13 million Filipino kids live below the poverty line, representing over 44 percent of those aged 15 and below.

Chronically malnourished children lack the nutrients needed for their proper health and physical and mental development. They become underweight, come up short on the proper height for their age, lack energy, perform poorly in school and, consequently, have very little means of breaking away from the cycle of poverty and making a better future for themselves.

Joining a growing number of private and public initiatives to alleviate the situation, the Laki sa Gatas (LSG) nutrition education advocacy has done much in its four-year run to spread greater awareness on the importance of combining proper nutrition and good education to turn young students’ lives around for the better.

To date, LSG has already visited 4,020 elementary public schools nationwide since 2006, and reached out to more than one million mothers and over two million kids.

The LGS advocacy promotes healthy and affordable dietary habits that include eating the right kinds of food and drinking milk, preferably two glasses a day. Students are taught to appreciate the importance of nurturing their ambitions, being healthy, studying well, and participating in school activities. Teachers and parents, meanwhile, are encouraged to find lively and creative ways of teaching the “Go, Grow and Glow” food groups, and to instill the habit of drinking milk in their kids even as parents make healthy and affordable food choices that are within their budget.

“Because of the urgency of the problem, we implement the LSG nutrition education advocacy heavily in areas with low milk per capita consumption,” says Jasmin Estacio, consumer marketing manager for Bear Brand. “This way, it is able to involve more people, and has been successful in promoting milk drinking as a low-cost yet highly effective health habit.”

She admits though that the advocacy still has a long way to go. Nutrition surveys repeatedly point to at least 25 provinces where long-standing or chronic malnutrition affects a very high percentage of schoolchildren. “We will be prioritizing these areas in the next phases of our advocacy, as a lot more needs to be done,” Estacio adds. “Our advocacy will get stronger than ever as we need to roll out to more public school communities and come up with new and exciting innovations to further engage advocacy participants.”