Childrens Nutrition
With Unilever’s strong re-entry to the Foods business in Asia, an opportunity was presented to expand our CSR efforts, focusing this time on undernourished children.
“Makulay ang Buhay ng Batang Pinoy”
(MBBP)
One province at a time, through its number one food brand Knorr, the company is making a dent in reducing the national malnutrition level among school children through its Makulang ang Buhay ng Batang Pinoy (MBBP) supplementary feeding program (A Colourful Life for the Filipino Child).
Now on its ninth year, the MBBP feeding program has already nourished more than 25,000 malnourished school kids, with the help of two NGOs – Kabisig ng Kalahi (Kabisig) and the UN World Food Program (UNWFP).
The MBBP program’s overall aim is to reduce by 10% the country’s malnourishment level for children 5 years old and below by year 2015. This is in line with the UN’s first millennium development goal to halve by year 2015 the proportion of hungry people who earn less than $1/ day.
The MBBP is among Knorr’s major corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects which seek to promote good and proper nutrition among Filipino children nationwide. Both Kabisig and the UNWFP receive a shared total budget of PhP18-M annually, to implement the MBBP.
To date, Kabisig has organized over 400 feeding modules since the partnership started in 2002, while the UNWFP has reached more than 90 schools, in each organization’s respective areas of responsibility. With the help of data mapping results gathered by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI), Kabisig and the UNWFP were able to identify the most malnourished provinces of the Philippines, which became their target beneficiaries.
