THE Negrense Volunteers for Change (NVC) Foundation launched its campaign on June 12 at SM North event center that aims to feed 10 million undernourished children in the country with its Mingo meals.
Mellie Kilayko, NVC Foundation president, led the launching of the program along with her fellow foundation officials and volunteers.
They target to reach this goal by January 2020.
She said, “We have already helped more than eight million children already and the balance to raise is P1.7 million meals. From the time NVC was born and from the time we produced meals, we already fed more than eight million times or 900,000 Mingo meals each year. What we like to do now is to accelerate within the next seven months to reach the 10 million Mingo meals mark so that we can fast track and jump start the development of more children. We have reached 37 provinces. Our next target is Calatrava. The Health Office of Calatrava a year ago, distributed Mingo meals for their health program. But just a week ago, we went to the mountains of Calatrava and distributed over 100 love bags filled with school supplies for the children of indigenous people in Calatrava. We saw their nutritional condition and they need nutritional support and we have targeted that. We also targeted the indigenous people of Davao del Norte, Lambunao in Iloilo and many other provinces.”
NVC’s Mingo meals provide complementary food to target clusters of children aged 6–60 months in deprived communities through a systematic and holistic approach.
NVC manufactures Mingo, a nutritious instant complementary food made of rice, mongo (mung beans), and malunggay (moringa). Mingo is primarily for infants and toddlers, but is also used for older children in areas of need.
This fills a gap in the nutrition of infants and toddlers. Most of government and NGO feeding programs focus on children 5 years and older, administered either in day care or elementary school.
Kilayko said they would like to see a gradual decrease in the rate of malnutrition in the Philippines.
Mario Capanzana, Director of Food and Nutrition Research Institute, Department of Science and Technology said, three out of ten children don’t match their height to their age because of the lack of nutritional requirement when they were zero to five years old.
They tried to develop a technology to make food with enough nutrition to feed the children. They have partnered with the NVC Foundation to campaign for a solution on the malnutrition incidence on children.