September 2022
"Baon" is the Filipino word for packed meal, typically lunch or snacks, prepared for kids to take to school. There are currently no established school lunch programs in the country and an estimated 1 in 3 Filipino children do not receive adequate nutrition. The goal of #ProjectBaon is to provide regular school lunches to children of families with an income of less than $4/day. For many of these kids, this packed lunch is their only healthy and balanced meal of the day. Nutrition plays an important role in the physical and cognitive development of a child. In other words, nutrition greatly influences their capacity to learn and retain information. Programs that help undernourished school children increases their chances of success in their adult life by earning a decent education. The #ProjectBaon campaign complements feeding programs that focus on maternal and neonatal nutrition.
Last year, we formed Pledge To Tri and partnered up with Reach Out and Feed Philippines Inc. to raise funds for their #ProjectBaon campaign. With the support of generous donors, we were able to generate enough funds to prepare 12,000 nutritious meals that supported 100 children for 120 days. At the start of the program, 25% of the beneficiaries were underweight while 71% were in the borderline-underweight category. Only 4% had a normal body mass index (BMI) for their age, height, and build. No child was considered underweight by the end of the program and the percentage of beneficiaries with a normal BMI increased to 81%. We were fortunate to have had more than 20 volunteers who tirelessly cooked, packed, and made sure the children consumed their daily meals.
The impact of providing a basic necessity to neglected communities has been tremendous. We will continue to champion early child development by ways of nutrition. And we will do so by doing what we love and do best: swim, bike, and run. Follow our performance-based pledging fundraiser at https://pledgeit.org/pledgeforprojectbaon.
Thank you!
Team Pledge To Tri
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June 2021
My name is Diego Navarro and I completed my first full Ironman on November 6, 2021. We formed Team PledgeToTri then signed up for the event to raise awareness for Reach Out Feed Philippines Inc.'s #ProjectBaon campaign. I had this crazy idea of combining my passion for nutrition, education, and triathlon to help address what I believe is an underlying impediment to good quality education in the Philippines: malnutrition.
I am where I am today because of my education and a little bit of luck. I was fortunate enough to regularly have baon so that I was not distracted by hunger while solving math problems. I can only imagine what these kids (and I'm sure many are inherently more intelligent than I am) can accomplish if sufficiently nourished during their formative years. Future leaders will come from this generation so we ought to provide a platform that allows them to be successful. I believe that all starts with providing a basic necessity - nutrition.
Team Pledge To Tri used a performance-based pledging platform to raise funds for the 2021 race season. We accepted pledges for every minute under the cumulative cut-off time (2,040 minutes or 34 hours) for all 3 races I am signed up for (Full Ironman and two Ironman 70.3 races). You can visit https://pledgeit.org/pledgetotriforprojectbaon to learn more about how our campaign went.
Thank you for your support!
