2015: The year in review

Gota de Leche has been around for 109 years. A foundation can’t exist for over a century without solid programs and a strong sense of civic duty. Year in and year out, Gota implements activities that improve the lives of its charges. Another thing that sets Gota de Leche apart is the way it implements those programs. Knowing the value of strong partnerships, Gota also collaborates with other organizations to increase the scope of each group’s activities.

This year was no different. The activities Gota enacted were part of a long string of efforts to keep the milk of human kindness flowing. In addition to its regular feeding and medical consultation sessions, below are some of the year’s most prominent activities.

Bantay Ngipin

The Bantay Ngipin initiative is a project of the International Association of Oral Medicine and Toxicology (IAOMT). To increase the reach of the project, the IAOMT frequently teams-up with other organizations. Bantay Ngipin is different from other dental outreach services because it uses only mercury-free materials.

IAOMT-Philippines and its volunteer dentists provided basic dental health services to Gota de Leche children aged 6 to 10 yrs. old. These services included check-ups, extractions, restorations, and prophylaxis.

Stop Hunger Now meal packing event

The Meal Packaging Event is a unique program of Stop Hunger Now. Its mobility and assembly-line system can accommodate up to a thousand volunteers at a time. A single Stop Hunger Now event can result in more than a million meals packed for beneficiaries. For this Friday’s event, employees of Hershey Philippines will pack 34,128 meals to benefit almost 200 children of Gota de Leche’s supplemental feeding program.

Stop Hunger Now is an international hunger relief organization that coordinates the distribution of food and other life-saving aid around the world. In 2005 Stop Hunger Now established its global meal packaging program, where volunteer groups combine rice, soy, a dehydrated vegetable blend (including Malunggay), and a vitamin composition including 23 essential vitamins and minerals into small meal packets.

Cebu daycare visit

Nothing can get in Gota’s way – not even a typhoon (or threat of the laglag-bala scam). As Typhoon Lando surged through Luzon, a four-woman team from Gota de Leche flew from Manila to Cebu for their quarterly nutritional outreach. They carried several boxes of meal packs prepared by Stop Hunger Now Philippines and volunteers from Hershey Philippines, and packages of milk for distribution to the kids of Sawang Calero’s daycare center. This visit showed the result of Gota and Sawang Calero’s efforts. A quick comparison from the weight gain chart showed an average gain of 1.95 lbs among the kids in a span of three months.

LPDI strategic planning

On August 2015, the board and staff of La Protección de la Infancia convened to plot the strategies for Gota de Leche’s future. New faces joined the foundation, bringing fresh ideas and perspectives. These strategies will help shape the foundation’s future and ensure its relevance for decades to come.

Stronger ties with partner organizations

Most of the year’s biggest programs were made possible with the support and collaboration of other foundations –  Stop Hunger Now, Hershey’s Philippines, Likhaan We Care Program, the PAGCOR CSR Program, student volunteers from the Far Eastern University National Service Training Program, as well as Gota de Leche staff and friends. As the ties between organizations become stronger, so do the results brought by these activities.