Department of Social Welfare and Development Secretary Rex Gatchalian on Friday expressed deep appreciation for the United Nations Population Fund’s (UNFPA) commitment to assist the department in promoting the welfare of pregnant and nursing Filipino mothers.
The DSWD and the UNFPA are now exploring ways how to promote the well-being of the country’s pregnant and nursing mothers, who have been identified as beneficiaries of the Food Stamp Program (FSP).
This was the main agenda of the meeting between Gatchalian and UNFPA Philippines Country Representative Dr. Leila Saiji Joudane during the latter’s courtesy call at the DSWD Central Office in Batasan Hills, Quezon City on Friday.
‘The private sector is helping us with that. They have already developed cookbooks, journals for the first 1,000 days. But maybe as an added dimension, you guys (UNFPA officials) come in to enrich the materials,’ Gatchalian said.
Joudane said her office has existing modules centered around capacitating pregnant and nursing mothers in empowering them and educating them about their rights.
She said the UNFPA can share their modules with the DSWD and help the Department in enriching the materials developed for the nutrition education classes for the beneficiaries of the FSP, including nutrition topics, contents on their rights, needs and other dimensions that will help pregnant and nursing mothers.
Gatchalian explained to the UNFPA official that the FSP ‘is about eating right, nutritious, delicious, and affordable meals for the family — not packed meals because they get to decide on their own.’
‘They are made to choose from healthy products and then execute that at home and understand the nutritional value of that,’ he added.
The FSP aims to provide food augmentation to the bottom 1 million households from Listahanan 3, who belong to the food-poor criteria as defined by the Philippine Statistics Authority, which also includes pregnant and nursing mothers.
UNFPA is the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency with a mission to empower women and deliver a world where every pregnancy is wanted.
Present during the meeting were Assistant Secretary for Partnerships Building and Resource Mobilization Atty. Ana Maria Paz Rafael; UNFPA Monitoring and Evaluation Officer Jose Roi Avena; and other representatives from UNFPA.
Source: Philippines News Agency