By Jennifer P. Rendon
There are around 15 million Filipinos who experience involuntary hunger.
This means that one 6 Filipinos experience involuntary hunger on a daily basis, according to a December 2021 study of the Social Weather Stations.
And this is where Globe Telecom (Globe), together with partner NGOs (non-governmental organizations) come in.
Globe has recently introduced The Hapag Movement, a unified fight against hunger through technology. It connects multi-sectoral partners that can contribute to addressing hunger and joblessness to achieve social impact at scale.
With the telco’s ecosystem of partners and digital platforms, it is designed to reach out to the most vulnerable Filipinos and help provide them with food and livelihood programs.
It is conceived in such a way that even ordinary customers could do their share.
There is “digital voluntarism” to support supplemental feeding programs through donation channel such as Globe Rewards and GCash.
The Hapag Movement will also do upskilling and employment opportunities through Globe Business and Asticom
Aside from enabling an ecosystem of multi-sectoral partners, there would also be value chain integration wherein there would be food box for supplemental feeding to be supplied by local businesses and smallholder farmers.
In its hunger alleviation approach, food box will also be provided to preselected families from the identified poorest communities.
As part of its livelihood and employment approach, beneficiaries will be given access to microlending to jumpstart a small business and access to employment opportunities through partner companies.
There would also be training for microentrepreneurship as part of its upskilling and microfinance approach.
The partner NGOs will do mobilization of logistics and on-ground executions.
The Ayala Foundation will cover 13,599 families from Metro Manila area.
Caritas Philippines will take care of the 5.064 families in Visayas (Southern Leyte, Bohol, Cebu, Negros Oriental, Negros Occidental) and Palawan.
The Tzu Chi Foundation will take charge of the 5,033 families from the National Capital Region, Central Luzon, Bicol, Cebu, Eastern Visayas, Zamboanga Peninsula, and Davao del Norte.
On the other hand, the World Vision will look after the 1,433 families from Antique (7 municipalities/barangays), Ozamiz City, Panaon Island, and Clarin, Misamis Oriental.
International humanitarian organization CARE will help raise funds from global foundation and partners.
Globe said it is committed to feed 100,000 families or 500,000 Filipinos in four years
As it is, there are are already 10,000 families that have already been served by Ayala Foundation Inc.
