Angara’s intensive Oh My Gulay! Advocacy campaign gains full support

By Jason de Asis

SENATE OFFICE, Manila, February 14, 2011-Senator Edgardo J. Angara's advocacy to combat widespread vitamin and mineral deficiency afflicting millions of Filipino schoolchildren has gained multisectoral support following a successful kick off of the Oh My Gulay! Advocacy campaign (OMG) that had reached fruition, after several years of planning and a successful feeding program launched last 2002.

“We all believe in the importance of our children’s health and nourishment,” Angara said at the grand kickoff of his campaign held Friday night at the Manila Polo Club, saying that in his early legislative career, the senator learned of the prevalence of this ‘hidden hunger’ in the poorer areas of the country.

Statistics showed that malnutrition in the Philippines directly affects the academic performance of the schoolchildren that’s the reason why his office launched a very simple school-feeding program consisting of just a glass of milk and egg-fortified noodles in 2002.

Angara explained the type of intervention is relatively inexpensive but the payoff is incredible—improvements in attendance and academic performance, height, weight and overall nutritional status, pointing out that the solution is literally right in the backyard; hence, the birth of the project.

The OMG campaign aims to promote the growing of vegetables as a low-cost but effective solution to fight malnutrition to our schoolchildren, saying that the way to fight this so-called ‘hidden hunger’ is a means by eating vegetables loaded with vitamins and minerals which are vital to school-age children.

He explained that the key is to get kids involved in planting, growing and harvesting these veggies, whether at home or in school, so they become more eager to eat them.

DSWD Secretary Cora “Dinky” Soliman, DepEd Secretary Bro. Armin Luistro, and DOH Secretary Enrique Ona, all cabinet members also had pledged support to the OMG program where the senator lauded all the co-convenors and the members of the project consortium for all their efforts towards his advocacy in ensuring the development of the children’s potential and to avoid malnourishment. (Jason de Asis)