By Mary May A. Abellon
DIPOLOG CITY - “Dipolog City will become the model city in Mindanao for the Partnership Against Hunger and Poverty’s (PAHP) initiative in food procurement from famiy farmers for school feeding program,” said National Program Coordinator Lawrence Cruz during the convergence meeting of DAR-DSWD-DA-FAO-WFP held here last week.
PAHP is a holistic approach to alleviate the poor households from hunger and poverty, bringing together the programs of the government to provide essential services to the poorer sectors in the community.
With this holistic approach, Cruz said, poverty and hunger incidence would be fully addressed through the technical assistance from the government and consistent project implementation.
ARCP II National Project Coordinator Director Herman Z. Ongkiko said that Dipolog City has an edge over the rest in the implementation of the program since “the local government unit itself promotes organic farming to its farmers.”
He added that all infrastructure projects of the government in rural areas will be linked with agri-enterprise.
Meanwhile, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Consultant Flavio Luis Mazzaro De Freitas stressed that this program is patterned after his country, Brazil, which was then replicated in Africa and now in Asia particularly the Philippines.
“This program will increase the income of small farmers, improve access to food, promote local economies, increase food varieties to be produced by small farmers, and boost the importance of organic products,” de Freitas said.
He further emphasized that with the convergence program, “PAHP initiative will reduce the chances of failure.”
Representative from the Office of the Secretary of DSWD, Natassia Quijano, said “this convergence wherein government concurrent efforts are linked is very important in achieving inclusive growth aimed by the Aquino administration,” as she thanked the LGUs and other agencies that are open to this initiative.
Dipolog Mayor Evelyn T. Uy also expressed her gratitude because the program coincides with the city’s thrust of reducing hunger and poverty by helping the farmers in particular and the community in general.
The lady mayor is optimistic that this program will succeed because Dipolog serves as the trading center for fruits and vegetables in the province.