Philippine Catholic group to take on malnutrition
October 19, 2022 · By Joseph Peter Calleja, Manila for www.ucanews.com
Impoverished Filipino children eat cups of soup during a feeding program by a child advocacy group inside a parish in Manila on March 27, 2009. (Photo; AFP)
Philippine Catholic group to take on malnutrition
A Catholic foundation in the Philippines is partnering with the agriculture department to produce vegetables that will feed the nation’s poor communities.
The Philippine Agriculture Department on the occasion of World Food Day on Oct. 16 pledged to supply vegetable seeds to be planted on Church land by members of the Kalinga ng Diyos Foundation (Care of God Foundation), which is dedicated to curbing hunger in the archipelagic country in Southeast Asia.
“The Catholic Church owns vast tracts of land that are, sad to say, lying idle. We are hoping to make use of them by planting vegetables that we can give to poor communities,” Dennis Salvador, the foundation’s spokesperson, told UCA News on Oct. 17.
The agriculture department had allocated more than 30 varieties of vegetables to be planted in the Bicol region, southern Luzon, and Western Visayas, where a high incidence of malnutrition among children aged 12 to 23 months is reported.
Members of the foundation would be shortly approaching the parish priests to lease Church-owned land.
“We are ready to formalize the engagement by signing a contract of lease. The Catholic Church would still own the lands. We will just borrow and use them for the humanitarian project,” Salvador explained.
The foundation was also ready to shoulder any expenses as long as they were “reasonable,” he added.
“Yes, we are willing to pay if there are any rents. We don’t want the Catholic Church to give or donate its land for the project. We’d like to build good relations with them,” Abigail Alba, the foundation’s secretary, told UCA News.
In 2019, the Presidential Commission for the Urban Poor issued an appeal to the Catholic Church to let its land be used for humanitarian purposes as “an act of Christianity and act of Christ in serving those who are less fortunate and neglected.”
A 2021 World Bank report said: “Micronutrient undernutrition is highly prevalent in the Philippines: 38 percent among infants six to 11 months old; 26 percent among children 12–23 months; and 20 percent of pregnant women are anemic.”
The report further stated that nearly 17 percent of children aged 6–59 months suffered from vitamin A deficiency, of which children aged 12–24 months had the highest prevalence (22 percent) followed by children aged six to 12 months (18 percent).
