“Secretary Rex Gatchalian has always been firm and clear that he will prioritize fighting hunger as the head of the DSWD. In fact, he reiterated it in his recent interview that this is one of the dreams of President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. to end hunger in the country,” Asst. Secretary Irene Dumlao, who is also the DSWD spokesperson, said.

The DSWD spokesperson’s statement was in reaction to the National Nutrition Council’s (NNC) report that one out of three households in the country experience food insecurity and malnutrition also remains as one of the causes of low intelligence quotient and stunted
growth.

“One of the programs implemented by the Department to address hunger and food insecurity is the Walang Gutom 2027: Food Stamp Program (FSP), which has been made a priority program by the Office of the President,”  Asst. Secretary Dumlao, who is also the DSWD spokesperson, said.

The FSP is considered a flagship program of the Marcos administration that aims to help address food insecurity of poor Filipino households by providing food augmentation to the bottom 1 million households who are classified as belonging to the food-poor criteria as defined by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), including pregnant and nursing mothers.

The FSP provides beneficiaries with access to monetary-based assistance and nutrition education to teach them how to prepare healthy and safe meals for the family.

“By teaching FSP beneficiaries to start consuming delicious types of food that are affordable and nutritious, the agency, in turn, helps them to form healthy eating habits that may lead to decreasing the malnutrition rate in the country,” Asst. Sec. Dumlao pointed out.

The FSP also invites beneficiaries, whose names were listed in the DSWD’s Listahanan 3,  to become productive citizens through skills training and participation in government-organized job fairs.

Recently, the DSWD also announced the expansion of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) to improve the nutrition and health of children and mothers in their first 1000 days.

The DSWD also implements community-driven approach in addressing malnutrition through the implementation of nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive programs such as the Philippine Multisectoral Nutrition Project (PMNP).

The PMNP which is implemented through the Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan-Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services (KALAHI-CIDSS), has already completed 2,055 community sub-projects on early childhood care and development (ECCD) and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) which benefitted more than 560,000 beneficiaries.

The DSWD also implements the Supplementary Feeding Program (SFP), which aims to improve and maintain the nutritional status of children enrolled in child development centers or in supervised neighborhood play by providing augmentation support for feeding and intensifying nutrition and health education for 120 days.

In the provinces under the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslin Mindanao (BARRM), the DSWD  has a program called Bangsamoro Umpungan sa Nutrisyon (BangUn),  a program that aims to make sure that all children in Mindanao have access to food, medical care, and education.

“As emphasized by Secretary Gatchalian, ending hunger is not easy and it needs a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to address this. The DSWD is fulfilling its mandate in this shared goal of ending food insecurity and lack of food among our kababayans,” the DSWD spokesperson said.#