As the city government grapples with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, it sees to it that nutrition programs do not take a back seat in local governance.
The launching of the community kitchen program in Barangay Rajah Muda earlier today manifested the continuing efforts of the local government unit of Tacurong City to bring to the forefront programs aiming to reduce prevalence of malnutrition, especially stunting ang wasting among children.
City Nutrition Action Officer Rogelio Garcia said that Rajah Muda was chosen as the pilot area of the kitchen program after being identified as barangay with high prevalence of malnutrition, specifically undernourished children.

Thirty-two families with severely undernourished children are the beneficiaries of the program that includes provision of free lunch daily on weekdays for a period of one month.
“Rajah Muda is just a pilot barangay for this program and we plan to cascade this to other barangays where malnutiriton is prevalent”, Garcia said.
Aside from the undernourished children, parents and other family members are also included in the feeding program. In other words, they also have to eat what the children are eating.
Meanwhile, City Nutrition Program Coordinator Myka Angelou Tomboc said that to further solicit participation and engagement to the program, parents of the beneficiaries are the ones who will be preparing the food to be served everyday.

Tomboc said that her team has already prepared set of healthy food menus to be cooked for one month. What the assigned cooks need to do is just prepare food and follow the cooking instructions.

“We expect that after a month, we will see big improvement in the nutritional status of these undernourished children”, Tomboc added.
Nutrition governance is one of the flagship programs of Mayor Angelo Montilla’s administration and the LGU is grateful for getting huge support from Zuellig Family Foundation and Nutrition International in terms of technical assistance and other support.
The city’s nutrition governance is anchored on the First 1000 Days Law that seeks to scale up the health and nutrition programs through a strengthened integrated strategy for maternal, neonatal, child health and nutrition in the first 1,000 days of life. (Mr. Allan Freno- Information Officer Tacurong City))