Profile

Volunteer for the Visayans (VFV) works in rural communities through its Nutrition Program. This is primarily to tackle malnourishment through the provision of nutritious meals to undernourished preschool kids and educate the community through series of lectures and workshops on nutrition and basic hygiene. All meals provided are researched and nutritionally analyzed to ensure that each week the children receive the adequate nutrients in accordance with government supplementary feeding guidelines.

Nutrition Programs are based in rural villages in Tacloban, Palo, and Tanauan.

This project is handled by one of the VFV community program coordinators or sponsorship program coordinators.

The Nutrition Program has been running for many years, since the founding of the organization. However, each site only runs for 4 months unless there is quite the need to extend the nutrition project to 6 months or even a year. Only those nutrition projects for VFV’s sponsored children run continuously.

The target demographic

The nutrition program is intended for pre-school children and all the kids under the Sponsorship Project. The education side of the project is intended for the community, in particular the children themselves and the parents.

 Purpose of the program

The program is put in place to help certain communities, to feed malnourished children, and in the process educate the people on the importance of proper nutrition. There is the need to educate on the need to reduce on the amount of salt and sugar used in the local diet, and to increase consumption of vegetables. There is limited public education on these issues.

Role of the Volunteer

The volunteer will be supervised by the local coordinator and work alongside one or two other nutrition volunteers.

Depending on the site to which the volunteer is assigned to, he/she may work either in the morning or afternoon but always only half a day from Monday to Friday except during holidays for at least 4 hours daily.

The volunteer is responsible for providing meals to the children on a daily basis. He/she will plan the menu taking into consideration the nutritional deficiencies that need to be addressed. He/she will purchase local ingredients available at the market to supplement the nutritional needs of the children. He/she will monitor the kids’ progress by measuring their height and weight to calculate the BMI.

In addition, the volunteer must teach the kids proper hand-washing and brushing teeth after meals at the beginning of the project and continue to practice this the whole time. It is the aim to instill good practices to them.

With regards to planning menus, volunteers must take into consideration the locally available resources the kids normally eat. Primarily the reason is that the kids would only eat food they are used to eating. Secondly, parents are more likely not able to afford vegetables and other food items not normally available locally. The project aims to educate the parents in such a way that they can replicate at home what the volunteers are making in the project.

Every two weeks there is a nutrition lecture for the parents of the children enrolled in the program. We always encourage volunteers to start with basic hygiene and nutrition. Not all the parents have good grasp of the English language so it is imperative that lectures are easy to understand and filled with illustrations. During lectures/workshops a VFV coordinator will be there to assist and translate.

Dress Code

To conform with the Filipino conservative culture and to look professional, volunteers must dress modestly. The volunteer must report to work wearing the appropriate clothes.

Top must consist of shirt of blouse or t-shirt with sleeves. No singlet or tank top. Top should not have plunging neckline. Bottom wear must be long pants or knee-length skirt. Footwear must be shoes or sandals.

Outside work, a volunteer can wear more comfortable article of clothing such as shorts and tank tops and wear flip flops.

Transportation to the Placement

During placement, volunteer will take any of the following public transportation vehicles, depending on their destination: jeepney, multicab, tricycle, or motorcycle. Patience is required when traveling to and from placement.

More common transport vehicles are jeepneys and multicabs. When visiting far-flung areas that do not have jeepneys, people take tricycle or motorcycle.

The minimum fare for a jeepney between Bliss and downtown is only 0.14 USD, while between Bliss and Robinson is 0.16 USD. The further you are from your destination, the more you pay.

Nutrition placements can be reached in about 40 minutes to one and 30 minutes depending on the distance from Bliss.