On its 5th wave, Adopt-A-Child Program continues to reach out

COMPOSTELA VALLEY PROVINCE, April 01-----Now on it’s fifth wave, the Adopt-A-Child Program of the Compostela Valley provincial government finds another 42 malnourished children to cater with its nutrition and health services.

This time, the recipients are located in the province’s coastal areas Pantukan, Maco, and Mabini where series of launching are scheduled for these municipalities.

In their first 3 batches experience, the provincial government employees led by Compostela Valley Governor Arturo T. Uy, Chairman of the Provincial Nutrition Council had a big heart of not only adopting the malnourished and severely underweight children but the family as a whole.  The program itself serves as an entry point of the other services and interventions they could extend to the family and the community as a whole.

Services like parents’ medication, house repair, giving of basically needed furnitures, livelihood provision such as fishpond and sari-sari store, vegetable gardening, and other household support were extended.

The program has been showcased as one of the best practices of the provincial government in the locality where some local government units replicated it also.

It shines even more under the direct supervision of Provincial Administrator Virgilia S. Allones.  It is being widened into community-based approach during its 4th wave and so on wherein the whole community is being catered as well.

There are add-on features to the offered services which involve community participation such as cooking demo, vitamin supplementation, conduct of Responsible Parenthood Seminar,  medical check-up, and Trainings on Vegetable Production, Fertilizer Production, and the Vermi Culture imparted by Vice Governor Manuel “Way Kurat” Zamora.  These services are all for free.

The applied interventions manifest a more better result with the positive response and active participation of the community.

Adopt-A-Child is a nutrition program started by the provincial government in 2010  with its respective departments and offices adopting malnourished children identified by the Provincial Nutrition Office and  the employees facilitating a 120-day food supplemental feeding.  (Grace Almedilla, IDS-comval)