To address the rising hunger incidence among Filipinos, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) vowed to intensify its anti-hunger mitigation programs this year.

Acting DSWD Secretary Celia Capadocia-Yangco said the government will address hunger not only on the aspect of unavailability or insufficiency of food to eat and demand or the inability to buy food but also on the values of the Filipinos about good nutrition.

The rising hunger incidence in the country, as analyzed by the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) was due to typhoons that devastated the country in the last quarter of 2009.

The fourth quarter survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) also revealed an increase in the number of Filipinos who experienced involuntary from 3.5 million families in October to 4.4 households last December.

Yangco pointed out that the livelihood programs being implemented by the DSWD strengthen people’s capacity to produce food, and on the part of the consuming public, strengthen their capacity to buy food or have access to sources of food.

She also said that the hunger mitigation program is not limited to feeding the people, instead it includes activities on increasing food production, enhancing efficiency of logistics, and food delivery on the supply side; promoting good nutrition, and managing population on the demand side; and putting more money in poor people’s pockets.

Among the programs the DSWD actively participates in are the Food for School, Tindahan Natin project, and the Healthy Start Feeding Program.

The DSWD also created a non-government organization-led network that aims to support feeding programs, and implemented in close partnership with the Kabisig ng Kalahi, an NGO providing supplemental feeding to poor children.

These livelihood programs are jointly implemented with members of the Anti-Hunger Task Force composed of the National Nutrition Council (NNC), Department of Agriculture (DA), and National Food Authority (NFA), as well as government agencies with micro-finance services.

“We will focus on more aggressive micro-financing to enable more poor families to avail of government resources so they can start their small livelihood enterprise,” Yangco pointed out.

The Tindahan Natin project jointly implemented by the DSWD and the NFA, provides low-priced but good quality rice and noodles to poor families, as well as provide livelihood to Tindahan Natin operators.