Ever since I started advocating for World Food Programme and now as the Philippine Connector of this United Nations agency I always connect food to education especially to children. As WFP message to World Food Day: Feed a Child, Feed a Dream, it shows the nurturing the child by food that he or she needs in order to focus on his or her students. Thousands of children all over world particularly to the dev eloping countries and those facing drought and conflict went to sleep hungry, other go to school with an empty stomach. Putting ourselves to the position of these children, can we ever focus to what is in the board or what the teacher is teaching with a rumbling stomach? Of course, it is too hard especially for a child who is experiencing hunger.
In celebration of World Food Day, we connect how food can be essential to a child’s education. I grew in a primary public schools that most of my fellow students were less fortunate who can hardly afford to have school uniforms, and even money for food. Some tries to ask for a piece in a sandwich, or biscuits to their fellow students, others are contented with drinking water or worse enduring the pain caused by an empty stomach. With that kind of dilemma, the student will lose focus on what is taught and end up having low grades in class.
In WFP, a dollar can feed four children and it is equivalent to Php10 per child here in the Philippines. Other may say that it is better to teach a person to catch fish so that he can live long, rather than give him fish and live another day. That may be true, but we are talking about children who go to school with an empty stomach. And why wait to preach what their parents would do, if we can do things now. A cup of warm nutritious meal can make a change in helping to fill the stomach of a child and let him or her filling his or her brain with education. With that help we can give to thousands of children, we are helping them fulfill their dream. Visit www.wfp.org/dreams and be part of that big impact to our future generations.
