On 28 February 2023, Goducate launched, by Zoom, the GoFeed program in the Philippines, with the goal of assisting undernourished children in underserved areas. The program serves nutritious meals to children three times a week. The initiative seeks to alleviate children's hunger not only for food but also for care and love. 1073 children from 650 households in 20 distinct communities in the Filipino provinces of Laguna and Batangas are the initial beneficiaries.
Goducate has been actively engaging with the community for many years through its Feeding Program (see post on June 24, 2022). The Feeding Program is essential to the lives of impoverished children---children abandoned by parent/s, children neglected by relatives, street children, undernourished children, “informal settlers”, and children in relocation sites and other underprivileged sectors of the community. But most of the time the program was cut short because of lack of funding.
The COVID-19 pandemic increased inflation rate in the Philippines, from 2.5% in March 2020 to 8.7% in January 2023, because of supply-chain disruptions, rising shipping costs, and bad weather. Food prices rose as a result. The poor became poorer, which exacerbates the food insecurity of those in need, and many children suffer as a result. The number of people, primarily children, who were going hungry and becoming malnourished rapidly increased. Goducate has witnessed how some children have no choice but to consume coconut pulp as food, to beg on the street for food, to eat only once per day, or to go days without eating at all. Children as young as 12 work in a variety of settings, including in junk shops, as street vendors, and assisting their parents with their jobs. For example, some of the kids help their parents collect garbage, and some go to the mountain to collect coconut husks and vegetables that they can sell.
To help such children realize their full potential and build a bright future for themselves and their communities, Goducate Laguna launched the Feeding Program in November 2020 in five communities, providing one meal per week. We had 393 beneficiaries as of June 2021, with 133 of them being undernourished. With the help of the Goducate Feeding Program, 103 of these 133 children gained weight after six months. We already had 913 beneficiaries from 17 different needy communities by January 2022.
The previous feeding program had to stop when the budget was exhausted, but it has now been absorbed by the GoFeed Program.
Our writer is Melisa D Espanola
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