Supplementary Feeding?? How effective it is?
Reality Check: Schools especially public barrio schools house learners that are under nourished. Factors for the said condition are presented, analyzed and evaluated purposively by the higher ups of the department, teachers, school nurses and public health officials. The huge and alarming number of malnourished children makes way for the initiation of school supplementary feeding program.
Supplementary feeding program for schools aims to decrease if not totally eradicate the colossal increase of under nutrition learners. The said program is set to last for 120 school days, everyday for proper evaluation of the learners’ condition. It could be morning snack, lunch or tea time snack. It is the school’s obligation to support the program by any means or find a suitable sponsor for it. Beneficiaries of the said program will be the nutritionally assessed learners, more or less those who belong to the severely wasted and wasted nutritional statuses respectively as per the school nurse’s appraisal.
Supplementary feeding program aims for the best for the learners. Yes. But how effective it is? This program will be valuable if and any if the school learners under the program will know the reason for their free meal; if they will understand how to value their health, and ways to help them be nutritionally-well. A person will get well if he wanted much to get well, but if he would not help himself, the intentionally good offers would be ineffective and useless.
It will also be successful if the school personnel, parents, and other NGO work hand-in-hand for its success. It takes two to tango, but the more the merrier, as the saying goes. A program will be triumphant if it is coupled not just by good intention but also with good people. Parents of the undernourished children should be aware of their children’s pitiable condition and know their roles and responsibilities as parents to these children. They should not be letting the program take away their right as parents; they should still be working with the program to make their children well. They should be inculcating in their minds that the feeding episodes at school is just supplementary and offers a little help. In charge teachers and the school nurses would also contribute to the success and effectiveness of the program if they would be happily serving the children and would not take the program as an extra burden but as an extra-way of being splendid, dignified and noble. That the joy lies in their aspiration and endeavor to create children with not just sound minds but sound bodies as well.
Effectiveness of any program in the four corners of the school lies on extreme dedication of the school staff, the golden hearts of the NGO and sponsors, the genuine support of the parents and the wholehearted participation of the learners, and most of all the extreme guidance of GOD.
By: Elsa T. Bumatay | Teacher III | Mountain View Elementary School | Mariveles, Bataan
