A total of 20,895 children in the province of Antique are benefitting from the ongoing supplementary feeding program (SFP) of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) meant to address undernutrition among Filipino children.
Jessie Cristales, in charge of SFP implementation in Antique, in an interview Thursday, said the DSWD has allocated PHP37.6 million for the province’s feeding program intended for children in 685 Child Development Centers (CDCs) in the province.
SFP is the provision of food in addition to the regular meals to children age 3 to 4 years old enrolled in CDCs.
The feeding program in Antique started when the supplies arrived on July 21.
Due to the pandemic, the feeding program is compressed to 60 days from the 120 days period to limit the face-to-face interaction of children in case they will be fed or rationed with food at the CDCs.
“It depends on the parents of the beneficiary children and the teacher whether they will cook the food items at their community kitchen or CDC or they will have it equally divided among the children to be prepared in their homes,” he said.
Cristales said the perishable goods that were already delivered to the CDCs include eggs, chicken, pork, carrot, potato, cabbage, mongo, garlic, and onion while the grocery items are cheese, spaghetti or pasta, cooking oil, pineapple tidbits, corned beef.
They were also provided with rice mongo nutri-pack.
He said they hope to complete the delivery of the remaining food items on September 28 to 30.
“The budget is still the same in 2019 though with every child allocated PHP15 worth of meal,” he said.
The goods provided by the DSWD were just an augmentation to the needed calories of children, he said.
“Through the SFP implementation (in the) previous year, there were really children who were found to be underweight but had gained weight or had become normal already,” he said.
Source: Philippines News Agency
