It began in September 2009 – when a case regarding a severely malnourished child from a remote barangay in Calbayog City came to the attention of VFV.

 

With the assistance of international donations, VFV admitted the child to a private hospital in Tacloban City, where she was treated and nursed back to health. Questions about how the child became malnourished remained unanswered – and to address this, VFV staff and a volunteer from Hong Kong travelled to the barangay to meet with local officials and health workers.

 

It was found that the barangay had one of the highest rates of child malnutrition recorded in the Visayans – a problem compounded by limited economic prospects due to the remoteness of the site. A child feeding-programme was then designed as a first step intervention to improve the baseline health of the children. In conjunction with nutritional education, micro-finance opportunities and mentoring for parents and carers – the goal was to prevent future cases of severe under-nutrition.

 

Upon returning to Hong Kong, our volunteer raised the awareness of the issue - successfully securing private funding from the Deutsche Bank Asia Foundation. Both local officials and the village itself are encouraged about the establishment of this much-needed project, and VFV is currently partnering with them to prepare for the start of the programme. The first stage of the child feeding programme is scheduled to run from February to July 2010, and will encompass all children in the barangay under six years old.

The project will begin with a six month daily feeding program for children under three years old as well as a nutritional education program for their parents to heighten nutritional awareness. During the program children will be weighed so that VFV along with barangay officials can track the progress being made.

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