#ProjectBaon: School Meals for Filipino Kids!

In our last quarterly report, we shared about our Tacloban Feeding Station. Now we are happy to tell you that we have 12 more feeding stations in operation! Four of these are in Luzon and eight are in Mindanao.

Luzon. All the four feeding stations in Luzon are outreaches. Outreaches open at least once a week and serve healthy meals and at times fruits too. Just this October, we started serving milk with our meals at all of our feeding stations! A chocolate company partnered with us and provided the milk we serve. They made a campaign called Generosity Bars. The Generosity Bars are chocolate bars from which the milk was removed and given to the kids.

Every Saturday, the four feeding stations feed kids who are mostly from poor families or slum areas. The Sta. Lucia and Sitio Banaba (both in Antipolo City) feeding stations and the Cubao feeding station (in Quezon City) all feed 30 kids weekly. The Sitio Dumpsite feeding station (in Antipolo) which was closed from March to August reopened in September. It serves 100 kids. Beyond feeding children, the outreaches also engage them in fun activities like music, games, and storytelling.

Mindanao. In Mindanao, we have seven outreaches and one Project Baon. These are the outreaches in Agusan Del Sur and the number of kids they serve:

1. Jireh Christian Ministries – 30 kids
2. Anchor Bay Evangelistic Church – 30 kids
3. Body of Christ, San Isidro – 30 kids
4. P-10 Lower Lukad – 30 kids
5. Brgy. San Isidro – 30 kids
6. P-9 Patrocenio – 30 kids
7. Brgy. Manat – 50 kids

Brgy. Manat also operates a Project Baon that serves 30 kids three times a week. This feeding program has a duration of three months and the weight of children is monitored. We hope to bring you the kids' progress in this station in our next report.

All in all, we are serving 450 kids in these 12 new feeding stations. All of these are possible through your generous donations. Thank you.

ROFP’s Tacloban Feeding Station has resumed its operations! For this project, we partnered with Youth with a Mission (YWAM) Tacloban. From 15 kids we served last year at this station, we now have 30 kids!

On Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, our Tacloban feeding coordinator, Wheng (also a YWAM Tacloban leader) starts to cook the lunch meals or baon at 3:30 in the morning. YWAM youth volunteers come by about two hours later to help her pack the lunchboxes. The meals, as you may already know are composed of nutritious meat and veggie dishes that Filipinos call ulam, fortified rice, and fruit. By six, Wheng and one of the young people deliver the food by motorcycle to Aringet. This is a small neighborhood where they meet and distribute the meals to the kids getting ready for school.

Wheng wants to teach the kids how to be responsible. She has instructed them to wash their lunchboxes when they are done eating, and give them to Genea and Jillian.

Genea and Jillian are siblings who are part of the 30 beneficiaries. They come from a very big family as they have 13 more siblings. Their mom works as a janitress and their dad operates a backhoe from time to time. Seven of the kids in their family are part of #ProjectBaon. One of their brothers, Jasper, a high school student, helps pack and deliver the meals.

Some days, Genea and Jillian find that some of the lunchboxes are not clean enough. When this happens, the siblings rewash the lunchboxes before they return them to Wheng. There are also days when some of the kids forget to return the lunch boxes, so the two go looking for them. Not only are the kids being fed, they are also being taught how to be responsible.

Thank you very much, dear partners, for your continuous support! We’re hoping to bring you more good news in our next report as we are preparing to open three more Project Baon sites soon.