#ProjectBaon: School Meals for Filipino Kids!

ROFP’s Tacloban Feeding Station has resumed its operations! For this project, we partnered with Youth with a Mission (YWAM) Tacloban. From 15 kids we served last year at this station, we now have 30 kids!

On Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, our Tacloban feeding coordinator, Wheng (also a YWAM Tacloban leader) starts to cook the lunch meals or baon at 3:30 in the morning. YWAM youth volunteers come by about two hours later to help her pack the lunchboxes. The meals, as you may already know are composed of nutritious meat and veggie dishes that Filipinos call ulam, fortified rice, and fruit. By six, Wheng and one of the young people deliver the food by motorcycle to Aringet. This is a small neighborhood where they meet and distribute the meals to the kids getting ready for school.

Wheng wants to teach the kids how to be responsible. She has instructed them to wash their lunchboxes when they are done eating, and give them to Genea and Jillian.

Genea and Jillian are siblings who are part of the 30 beneficiaries. They come from a very big family as they have 13 more siblings. Their mom works as a janitress and their dad operates a backhoe from time to time. Seven of the kids in their family are part of #ProjectBaon. One of their brothers, Jasper, a high school student, helps pack and deliver the meals.

Some days, Genea and Jillian find that some of the lunchboxes are not clean enough. When this happens, the siblings rewash the lunchboxes before they return them to Wheng. There are also days when some of the kids forget to return the lunch boxes, so the two go looking for them. Not only are the kids being fed, they are also being taught how to be responsible.

Thank you very much, dear partners, for your continuous support! We’re hoping to bring you more good news in our next report as we are preparing to open three more Project Baon sites soon.