Eating for their futures
25th August 2010 by Andrew Matheson, Manila | 1 Comment
Serving school lunches isn’t something you would expect to be part of an ambassador’s schedule, but that’s what I was doing near Manila recently. I had travelled to the delightfully-named Tropical Village Elementary School just over an hour from the capital, to launch a supplemental feeding programme the embassy is supporting financially.
The embassy funding comes from one small part of New Zealand’s overseas development assistance called the ‘Head of mission fund’. This makes limited amounts of money available to support activities that directly meet development needs in the Philippines. This small but separate fund means we can be more flexible and responsive than with our larger and longer-term projects.
Tropical Village might sound like a resort, though it’s anything but. Many of the population are poor. The roll of the elementary school is a staggering 3,300 pupils, and the kids have lessons in two shifts in classes that average nearly 50 pupils at a time.
For this feeding programme, the embassy has partnered with the San Miguel Foundation and two of the parent corporation’s food subsidiaries: Magnolia and Purefoods Hormel. The programme operates in several schools, and at Tropical Village some 60 grade 1 and grade 2 children have been selected, based on how far they are below the height/weight curve for their age. These children, six or seven years old, come from a very poor community and are malnourished.
Enjoying his first school meal
The supplemental feeding programme involves teams of volunteers, mostly parents, working under the school’s supervision to buy, cook and serve one nutritious meal per day to the target children. The children are dewormed at the start of the programme, and their growth monitored over the next six months. They should be able to graduate from the programme by then, with the parents better educated about the importance of good nutrition and ways of preparing good meals at low cost.
The New Zealand Aid Programme exists to support sustainable economic development in developing countries, in order to contribute to a more secure, equitable and prosperous world. So how does a school feeding programme play a part in that?
The link between malnutrition and economic achievement is complex, but also well established. The World Bank puts it quite bluntly: “Malnutrition substantially raises the risk of infant and child deaths, and increases vulnerability to a variety of diseases in later life. In addition, malnutrition impairs cognitive ability and decreases school performance, and lowers labour productivity and lifetime earnings. Combating child malnutrition is of central importance to the future economic and social welfare of countries”.
At the programme’s launch I spoke about three things: the partnership between the embassy, the corporate sponsors and the school; the volunteerism of the parents who are helping the programme; and the development benefits of ensuring that young children are well nourished.
But the most important message came from the general manager of the nearby Magnolia dairy plant (which, by the way, processes and packs millions of dollars worth of New Zealand product every year). Here he was, running a large and complex operation. But he had grown up in a very poor area of Manila, and had benefited from a supplementary feeding programme when he was at elementary school. The US government had provided milk and buns fortified with vitamins and minerals.
Symbolically handing over funds to the school
So, he told the kids, eat up. This food is important. You could become a business manager like me, or an ambassador for the Philippines. Nothing that I could have said was as eloquent as his story.
Greetings Amb. Matheson,
It was very kind of you to support feeding programs. I’ve written a similar article and I hope you can also extend your kindness to public school children in San Isidro and Cabiao, Nueva Ecija. Hope you can find the time to read my article, below is the hyperlink. Thank you.
http://www.ateneo.edu/index.php?p=120&type=2&sec=29&aid=8795