NUTRITION is one of the pressing issues now being faced by most of the Marawi crisis evacuees, said a non-profit organization (NGO) official.
As their stay in the evacuation centers grows longer, access to healthy food apparently lessened or became more difficult each day.
To address this concern, a Kagayanon non-profit organization, Modern Nanays of Mindanao, is now taking up the responsibility of serving healthy food directly to the evacuees in Iligan City with their campaign entitled “Bente para sa Marawi.”
Nadine Angelica Casiño, the founder of Modern Nanays of Mindanao, said this program shares the same concept as with saving in a bottle. Anyone or any group can prepare any plastic bottle and then label it with “P20 para sa Marawi.” These bottles can then be placed in places where people can drop their P20 as a donation to Modern Nanays of Mindanao which will be used to feed the Marawi evacuees with healthy food.
“We do not have enough resources to purchase vegetables and we can’t get hold of big companies to donate a big amount of cash. But we all surely can have P20 to spare,” said Casiño.
Modern Nanays of Mindanao took up this initiative after realizing that even though the evacuees are indeed safe and accommodated in the centers, they still need to be assisted when it comes to having nutritious food.
This concern is pointed most especially to infant and children who have been spending their time in the evacuation centers. Unlike what they mostly eat in their homes, these children have been eating only the relief goods like canned or instant that are mostly being handed out to evacuees.
“Ang food provided by the government are uniform man gud… not targeted to the special needs of vulnerable groups,” Casiño said.
The money that will be collected will be used to buy fresh fruits, vegetables, and meat that are from a local market supplier.
With P20, Casiño said they can feed about two children with a supplementary meal. Each 500-600-kilo-Calorie meal prepared by the Nutritionist and Dietician Association of the Philippines (NDAP) is around ten to twenty pesos each. With this, the budget then to feed 110 persons ranges from P1,000 to P1,500 a day.
"Our implementing partners is the NDAP-Misamis Oriental chapter. They prepared the meal cycles for four weeks. They looked for a local supplier and made the arrangements to deliver and source fresh ingredients for the mother baby friendly spaces and community kitchen," Casiño said.
The meal cycles are planned with everyday deliveries of a variety of fresh, raw ingredients are expected feeding for our pregnant mothers, lactating women, and young children with one fresh cooked meal of different viands a day. This feeding program will initially run for 2 weeks and will be initiated at the Buruun School of Fisheries evacuation center.
If there will be more collections, Modern Nanays of Mindanao plans to extend this feeding plan to more evacuation centers in Lanao del Sur and Lanao del Norte.
"Young children are most vulnerable in crisis. We want to ensure our children in the womb until five years old are properly fed," Casiño added. (Abigail Viguella,SunStar Philippines)
