Sixty-four daycare centers from the Municipality of San Remigio on Wednesday started the Supplemental Feeding Program (SFP) of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) benefiting over 1,000 children.

“The feeding program will initially be for 10 days and will benefit 1,734 children (3 to 4 years old),” said San Remigio Municipal Social Welfare and Development Officer Rosaella Sastrillo in an interview.

The SFP was supposed to run for 120 days with a daily budget of PHP50 per child but the goods delivered on Tuesday were only enough for the initial 10 days.

Sastrillo added that they had to carry out the feeding program because the Nutribun, one of the components of the program, would expire in five days.

Nutribun is a nutritious bread product being distributed to address hunger and malnutrition.

“Since the daycare children are not having face-to-face classes yet, their parents are the ones who get their share so they could have (the) feeding in their homes,” she said.

Aside from the Nutribun, parents also assist the Child Development Workers (CDW) or the daycare workers to prepare nutritious meals of chicken, vegetables, and rice at the centers.

The CDWs deliver the food allocation to children whose parents could not make it to the center.

“The feeding program provided by the DSWD has really helped the Daycare children considering that several of them are children of farm laborers with no permanent source of income to buy their food,” Sastrillo said.

She said that the feeding program has even become one of the main reasons why parents enroll their children in the day center. (PNA)