MANILA, Philippines — Teenagers leading The MEALenium Project partnered with various stakeholders to push for a school-based feeding initiative for undernourished children.

The MEALenium Project co-founders Joshua Emmanuel Tan and Philip Sebastian Belmonte signed an agreement with  Jollibee Group Foundation, Department of Education Quezon City Schools Division and Lupang Pangako Elementary School to benefit over 600 malnourished public  elementary students.

The new partners recently formalized the agreement for the first Busog, Lusog, Talino (BLT) Kitchen for the DepEd’s school-based feeding program.

Part of the 1990 Millennium Development Goals  of the Philippines was to significantly decrease the percentage of underweight children in the country from 27 percent to 13.5 percent by 2015.  Although progress has been made in this regard, efforts have still fallen short.

Founded by two teenagers, Philip Sebastian “Basti” Belmonte and Joshua Emmanuel Tan, in partnership with Fr. Julio Cuesta, the parish priest of St. Benedict church, and the Payatas Orion Foundation, the MEALenium Project initialy aimed to provide nourishment to the impoverished young babies and children of St. Benedict, Payatas.

Source:  http://www.philstar.com/radar/2016/09/21/1625980/mealenium-project-teams-orgs-feed-600-undernourished-children

Updates as of December 2016:

We are now serving meals to 1,000 kids daily! We are elated to reach this milestone. What started as a goal of serving 1000 nutritious meals monthly has been surpassed to now serving 1000 meals daily!

We feed the kids in 3 batches daily from 10:30 am to 2 pm.

10:30 – 11:00 — Kindergarten students and Grade 2 students

10:30-11:30 — Grade 4 and Grade 6 students

12:00- 2:00 — Grade 1, Grade 3 and Grade 5 students

http://www.philstar.com/radar/2016/12/26/1656936/millennials-help-payatas-kids-future-meal-time

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

%d bloggers like this: