Hapag-Asa: What sacrifice can you do to feed a hungry child?

How to fight hunger is one of the primary concerns of the world today in the midst of the global financial crisis. In the Philippines, we can paint a picture of poverty brought about by our own crisis. More and more Filipino children are sleeping at night with no homes, not even on clean sheets, with empty stomachs. The poorest of the poor can be found in the southernmost part of the country – in the ARMM. And as time goes by, the disparity of the rich and the poor is growing as the marginalized groups are experiencing the worse.

In a strong effort to ease the number of children getting hungry each day, Archdiocese of Manila’s Pondo ng Pinoy launched the Hapag-Asa Integrated Nutrition Program in 2005 as a charity drive that feeds thousands of malnourished children nationwide. Simply called Hapag-Asa, it is a manifestation of the Church’s selfless desire to help every Filipino child to have a better future.

Since hunger has other economic and social underlying problems, Hapag-Asa’s approach is multi-causal, reaching out to parents through livelihood programs and education classes that would enable them to earn a living for themselves and to become better parents. It is also multi-sectoral as it partners with non-government organizations, parishes and archdioceses to fund and support its feeding program.

Though Hapag-Asa is a program in partnership with Catholic parishes and archdioceses, it has already extended its support to our Muslim brothers and sisters in various areas of Mindanao. Since at the heart of the program is to serve others selflessly especially hungry children between the age group of 0 to 6 years old, it does not matter whatever is the sex, religion, or ethnicity of the child is. 

From the time when it was launched, Hapag-Asa has fed an average of 150,000 children per year or about 600,000 children in four years. For this year, people from Hapag-Asa are aiming to feed 165,000 malnourished children throughout the country for this year.

What sacrifice can you do? For Hapag-Asa, “No one is too poor not to be able to share.” The amount Hapag-Asa spends for each child enrolled in the nutrition program costs only P10.00. And thanks to our high-technological way of living, a person can share his blessings via Globe’s G-load scheme which will immediately go to Hapag-Asa.