“This family food pack isn’t just a bag of food items. It has a name. Behind this is a family that we are feeding. And this makes me do more.”
This is just one of the insights shared by one of the foreign delegates who volunteered to produce family food packs at DSWD’s Regional Resource Operations Center.
The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) recently welcomed visitors, including 16 foreign delegates coming from different parts of the world, including the USA, Germany, Brazil, Peru and the Congo. These visitors are members of the Focolare Movement, an international organization dedicated to making the world a better place by promoting unity and brotherhood. As part of their GenFest 2018 immersion program, these visitors experienced how DSWD workers produce family food packs in preparation for disasters.
Following DSWD standards, the visitors succeeded in packing 300 family food pack boxes; each box containing six kilos of NFA rice, four cans of corned beef, four cans of beef loaf and coffee packs. The boxes were labeled with the date of production and the expiration date, to ensure that the food items inside are fit for consumption. Afterwards, these boxes undergo a final inspection before they are stacked into pallets and stored at the RROC. These boxes will be stockpiled; ready to be dispatched to Local Government Units (LGUs) upon request during disaster operations.
RROC Officer-In-Charge Orville Berino shared that the facility at RROC is still being upgraded to meet the government’s mandate to have 30,000 family food packs ready at any given moment, especially since the rainy season has already begun in the Philippines. These preparations are made to ensure that the Region will have an ample supply of relief goods during disasters, especially since the Eastern Visayas’ location makes it prone to storms.
“If we put not just our efforts, but our love in these boxes, the love will remain. The food will go, but the love will stay.”