The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Regional Director Arnel B. Garcia and DepEd Regional Director Ramon Fiel Abcede signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) to implement the School- Based Feeding Program (SBFP) that will benefit the severely wasted Kinder and Grades I-VI pupils and their families.

The implementation of the School Based Feeding Program is the response to the recent DepEd Nutritional Assessment Report for SY 2012-2013 which revealed that 14.24% or about 2 million school children are wasted and 0.4 million school children are overweight.

DSWD is responsible in releasing funds to the Department of Education, Regional Office in accordance with COA circular numbers 94-013 dated December 13, 1994. Shall also help in the monitoring of fund management, utilization, program implementation and respond to operational concerns of the SBFP and shall likewise designate a project focal person to ensure that the implementation of the program is administered.

DepEd shall be responsible for the full implementation of the SBFP and ensure timely release of funds to the Division Offices and liquidation of funds by same.

The School Based Feeding Program consist of providing food in addition to the regular meals of severely wasted school children to address the under nutrition problem and short term hunger among public school children. The wasted children may also be included in the program in localities where partners such as the local government units and NGO’s are present.

The food supplementation will be in a form of hot meals to be served once a day during snack/meal time five (5) days a week for 120 days for a total target beneficiaries of 51,774 kinder to grade VI pupils in 3, 021 public schools in Bicol.

Parents of the beneficiaries will managed the feeding program based on a prepared meal cycle using available indigenous food supplies.

About 89,406, 080 will be transferred by DSWD to DepEd. Each child will have an allocation of P15/day for a period of five days.    ###eejerusalem