Milk feeding program underway for day care children Jun 2021 Bubalus By Ma. Cecilia Irang The tie-up between the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and DA-Philippine Carabao Center (DA-PCC) in a 120-day milk feeding program is already making headway in eight cities nationwide with a total of 10,619 beneficiaries. LGU and DSWD Regional Office milk feeding focal persons inspect the milk products delivered by the cooperative. (Photo by Yamang Bukid Farm-Palawan) Said program is being implemented in the cities of Olongapo, Angeles, Lucena, Puerto Princesa, Iloilo, Tacloban, Zamboanga, and Bacolod. Pursuant to the Republic Act No. 11037 or “Masustansyang Pagkain para sa Batang Pilipino”, the DSWD in coordination with the local government units (LGU) and agencies is mandated to implement a supplementary feeding program (SFP) to address undernutrition among children (ages 2-5 years) currently enrolled in the day care centers or Supervised Neighborhood Play (SNP) groups by incorporating fresh milk and fresh milk-based food products in the hot meals. Several memoranda of agreement between the DSWD Field Offices and DA-PCC Regional Centers were signed to implement the program with a total funding of Php24,211,320 provided by DSWD. The DSWD coordinated with DA-PCC to link them with local dairy producers and cooperatives where milk can be sourced from. The latter identified and tapped its assisted dairy farmer-cooperatives as suppliers of milk in the feeding program, which include Catmon Multi-Purpose Cooperative (MPC), Rosario Livestock and Agriculture Farming Cooperative, Yamang Bukid, Calinog Farmers’ Agriculture Cooperative, Baclay MPC, Baybay Dairy Cooperative, and San Julio Agrarian Reform Beneficiaries Cooperative. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing health protocols, the co-ops delivered milk products to the designated drop-off points, which were inspected afterwards by LGU and DSWD Regional Office milk feeding focal persons. Under the program, each child is given 200 ml toned carabao’s milk for 120 days to combat malnutrition. The DSWD-funded milk feeding program carries twin benefits, as it will not only protect children from malnutrition by improving and/or maintaining their nutritional status, but will contribute to the sustainable economic activities of the local dairy farmers as well. Meanwhile, the DSWD also partners with DA-PCC through its assisted co-ops in Region 3 for the facilitation of the 10th Cycle SFP with 588,492 beneficiaries. Through this scheme, the children are given 200 ml of milk each for 12 days (once a week for three months) in addition to the regular nutritious, hot or alternative meals under the government’s SFP. “We provided them (carapreneurs) technical assistance on aspects of proper and hygienic milk handling and processing to produce food safety-compliant pasteurized toned carabao’s milk. Aside from that, we also target to teach them how to develop sustainable milk-based livelihood enterprises like Milkybun production,” said Mina Abella, DA-PCC’s milk feeding national coordinator and Product Development and Innovation Section head. “DSWD considers Milkybun as alternate food for its SFP, so this is another livelihood for the carapreneurs. Hopefully, they will start the inclusion of Milkybun in their 11th cycle SFP,” she added. Apart from DA-PCC, DSWD also partners with the National Dairy Authority, Cooperative Development Authority (CDA), LGUs, non-governmental organizations, and other agencies in the implementation of the milk feeding program.
Terms and Conditions Welcome to DA-PCC Knowledge Portal (K-Portal)! Thank you for visiting k-portal.pcc.gov.ph website. Subscription to the K-Portal is free. We don’t charge you to use or access this platform. Your privacy and security are very important to us. Please read the information below for your guidance. Data Policy To provide you with the services of our K-Portal, we must process information about you. We do not collect your personal information unless you choose to provide them. Rest assured that we do not share or sell your personal information but we do collect technical information about your visit to our website. When you visit k-portal.pcc.gov.ph website, our system automatically stores: Your personal information that you provided for subscription (email, password, name) Date and time of subscription Words or information you searched for The publications/ categories you viewed on our website The items you clicked on our website Your comments Items you downloaded from our website This process does not collect or track any of your personal information but makes our website more useful to visitors. Through such information, we learn about the number of visitors to our website, detect operational problems, and continuously improve the website’s overall functionality and security. Your comments will be visible to the public. Please make sure to not share information that you do not want made available to the public. We will not be responsible for how other visitors may use your information. Please be reminded that when you voluntarily submit information, it constitutes your voluntary consent to the use of the information you submit for the website’s improvement and maintenance. General Disclaimer and Copyright Notice All the contents uploaded to our website are considered public information, which can be used as reference and may be shared but we strictly request that our agency, DA-PCC, and our knowledge portal website including authors of knowledge products be cited as the source of any information, photos, and images copied from this site and that any photo credits or bylines be similarly credited to the photographer or author. The articles, publications pdf, AVPs, books, manuals and other materials owned by DA-PCC should be directly acquired from the knowledge portal and not through other sources that may change the information in some way or exclude material crucial to the understanding of that information. Disclaimer While we make every effort to provide accurate and complete information, some information may change between site updates. With a lot of articles and documents available and uploaded within short deadlines, we cannot guarantee that there will be no errors. We make no claims, promises or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of the contents of this website and expressly disclaim liability for errors and omissions in the contents of this website.