Typhoon Haiyan Survivors' Food Security Project

Greetings all Friends,

I am happy to report that the project of  my daughter Michelle Frances Sayre is one of the winners in this year’s Ten Accomplished Youth Organization (TAYO) national competition. Her entry is urban gardening project and she chose the project because according to her “it is close to my heart having parents who are small farmers (and NGO leaders) and because I think our approach in urban gardening best embodies the TAYO ideals of generating impact to the stakeholders, able to harness the spirit of volunteerism, creativity and innovation, sustainability and effective use of resources. The impact generation is because most of poor urban youths have nothing to do and maintaining vegetable gardens means income and improved nutrition for them. People should realize that gardening is fun and recyclable resources around the house can be used to start one. Filipinos according to the Food and Nutrition Research Council also suffers from what is called “hidden hunger” or the lack of micro-nutrients in the diet and eating vegetables can help solve this.”

She added that “In terms of the ability to harness the spirit of volunteerism especially among the youth, I made it a point to recruit and train volunteer youth promoters who go from communities to communities to recruit youths to start gardening activities. In terms of creativity and innovation, I promote what is called hydrophonics or soil-less gardening, which means that the roots of the plants get the fertilizer directly from the water-based fertilizer solution. Another innovation I already mentioned is the use of recycled materials such as sacks and containers as garden materials and collecting organic matter in the house as fertilizer.”

Now her team is bringing their award money of 50,000 pesos to help the Typhoon Haiyan survivors in the city of Ormoc. This is great news indeed because the youth in Ormoc have nothing to do at the moment and are feeling hopeless. Surely the initiative of Michelle will bring so much relief for so many.

 The news link of her award is found in,  http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/576462/selfie-generation-yes-but-they-do-care

 Very sincerely yours,

Cora

Dear Friends,

Greetings from typhoon-ravaged Leyte Province. The rains is continuing here and life is difficult specially for very poor survivors. Food is also scarce and food aid by international aid agencies is getting scarce. There are just too many victims and covering them all with continuous food supply is always a challenge. This is specially true for survivors living in far-flung places such as mountain areas where the trucks could not reach them. 

Our approach towards food provision and food security is in terms of providing vegetable seeds and seedlings. Some of the seedlings are very tiny and raising them by the survivors require special skills. So what we do is to raise the seeds in seedling trays instead and then distribute the seedlings to the survivors. We also conduct trainings during distribution in order to equip the beneficiaries with gardening skills. In so doing we ensure continuous food supply. Some of the vegetables the survivors can harvest in 22 days so this initiative has indeed a great impact in ensuring food always in the home. Vegetables is also scarce here and expensive so surplus can be sold by the growers.

Again, thank you very much for your kind help.

With much gratitude,

Cora