Mayor Escalante launches in-school feeding program

Cadiz City officials led by Mayor Patrick Escalante and School Superintendent Dr. Xz Dignadice launched its school based feeding program in support to the school health and nutrition program for all 51 elementary schools from pre-schoolers to Grade 3, last July 6, 2011.

The PAT project dubbed as “Pagkaon Aton Tatapon” is a supervised eating program in all school aim to address the malnutrition problem, seek to improve delivery of health and nutrition services and academic performance in public schools from kindergarten to Grade 3. It is a collaborative effort of the Local government officials, Dep-ed officials, Parents Teachers Association (PTA) and barangay officials. Mayor Patrick Escalante said “by keeping the children in school, increase their nutritional status and at the same time improved their intelligence the PAT project is just like hitting 3 birds in one stone. It had minimized tardiness and improved attendance in school."

Based on the report, last year Cadiz City ranked number two (2) as to the number of malnourished children, but due to continuous feeding program the record shows that Cadiz City has decreased the number of malnourished children.

The city has appropriated 3.7M taken from the City general fund, 20% city development fund and adopts a school program fund to finance the PAT project for one year.

The children have been weighed and dewormed before the feeding and their weights were regularly monitored by the city health workers. They will be fed at least 3 times a week from Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Under the program, the children will acquire incidental learning such as preparing the table, setting the table napkins, proper use of eating utensils, good manners, saying grace before meals, washing hands before and after eating and other practical values like sharing food with others. The parents are task to do the preparation and the cooking.

Program evaluation as to the increase in academic performance, children’s participation, rate of drop out and school children’s gain in weight will be conducted at least every three months./*