Feeding programs create jobs in Alaminos

By Mortz C. Ortigoza

ALAMINOS CITY – The mayor of this city bared how his three-year feeding program benefited not only the nutritional and academic statuses of school children but the economic welfare of the people here.

In an interview recently with Hawaii’s TV “Health & Wealth’ hosted by Dr. Terry Shintani, Mayor Hernani Braganza explained that the city’s P10 million feeding program every year pumped-prime the local economy.

This is because the mostly farming parents supplied the foods for the feeding programs here by P577, 380.00 in 2008, P744, 566.23 in 2009, and P408, 312.75 in 2010.

Braganza said that the beneficiaries of this program were 7,000 day care and pre-school pupils and 13,000 elementary school children.

“Some 6,700 or 42 percent of 16, 000 families have benefitted from this program, too,” he stressed.

He noted that this endeavor dubbed as “Bright Child Program: created the following jobs here by 349 in 2008, 1,202 in 2009, and 1, 461 in 2010”.

He explained that because of the thrice-a-week feeding program, parents of the children saved P21, 708,000 as lunch cost, with each child appropriated P10.12.

The parents also saved transportation cost of P14, 472,000 as children no longer go home and be back to school by spending for the service of motorized trike as their lunch were already provided by the city government.

The feeding program conceptualized by Braganza did not only underscore the economic well-being of the parents here but would eclipse the struggling national government on its race to meet Poverty & Hunger and Universal Primary Education as goals for United Nation’s Millennium Development Goal that mandates member countries to achieve in 2015.

He said with this yearly six-month program, the parents were able to sell to the city government almost 26,000 kilos of kangkong, 13,000 kilos of pechay, almost 16,000 kilos of malunggay, 15,000 kilos of mongo, 17,178 kilos of eggplant, 21 kilos of mushroom, 20,883 kilos of squash, 6,469 kilos of ampalaya, and 1,185 kilos of saluyot.