April 3, 2014 - A total of 17,524 severely wasted school children in Kinder to Grade 6 of Region 10 will benefit from DepEd's School Based Feeding Program (SBFP) starting this July with a total funding of over 33M.

This is one of the newest and expanded features of the SBFP for SY 2014-2015 as disclosed by Dr. Ella Naliponguit, Director of DepEd's Health and Nutrition Center during the Mindanao Cluster SBFP Planning Workshop held at the Regional Learning Center, Cagayan de Oro City. Among others, SBFP shall be done for 120 days following the standardized malunggay based recipes and 20 days cycle menu utilizing locally produced or grown foods. The SBFP nationwide implementation is funded under the GAA amounting 1,079,543,040.00 in partnership with the Department of Social Welfare and Development.

.The new SBFP will also be implemented with a component on Partnership Building and Creation of Local Alliances.  During the workshop, NPC Navales underscored the importance of tapping the already existing Local Nutrition Committees from the provincial to barangay levels for the purpose.  NPC Navales also requested DepEd to consider these structures as part of the enhancement of the implementation and partrship arrangements of the SBFP which was welcomed by Dr. Corazon on Dumlao of HNC DepEd.