Hand In Hand Ministries International

Hunger - One in five, or 3.8 million Filipino families

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 02:34:00 +0000

SWS: Hunger hits record high, afflicts 3.8M Pinoy families

Hunger hit a new record peak nationwide as one in five, or 3.8 million Filipino families, had experienced having nothing to eat in September 2007. This was the result of the latest survey of the creditable pollster Social Weather Stations (SWS), where the national percentage of families having experienced nothing to eat rose to a high of 21.5 percent.

SWS, which published on Monday the results on BusinessWorld (http://www.bworld.com.ph/), said this was a “dramatic" reversal of gains in June where hunger fell to 14.7% from 19% in February 2007 and November 2006. It added the 21.5% was almost 10 points above the 11.8% average for the 38 hunger surveys it had conducted quarterly starting mid-1998. This was despite government’s implementation of anti-hunger programs like the food-for-school program and the Gulayan ng Bayan to encourage backyard farming.

Earlier, President Arroyo claimed she herself experienced hunger, but was told that the hunger in the SWS surveys refer to involuntary hunger.

The highest rise involved moderate hunger, referring to those who experienced it “only once" or “a few times." It rose to a record 17.4% in September from 12.5% in June. Counted in this category were those who did not state their frequency of hunger. Severe hunger, meaning it was experienced “often" or “always," rose to 4.1% from 2.2% in June. However, it remained below the record of 6% notched in March 2001.

More Filipinos feel their lives are worse now than 3 years ago, survey says

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 02:53:00 +0000

MANILA (AP) 04/12 8:10:27 PM - The number of Filipinos who feel they are worse off now than they were three years ago is rising, despite the government's claims that the economy has improved, a survey showed Thursday.

The April 3-5 survey by independent pollster Pulse Asia showed 54 percent of respondents claimed they are worse off now than they were three years ago, up from 46 percent in April 2004.

"It appears that the reported gains from the economic reforms put in place by the Arroyo administration are not yet being felt by most Filipinos," Pulse Asia said.

Only 11 percent of the 1,800 adults surveyed said their quality of life is better, down from 16 percent three years ago. The number of people who felt the quality of their lives remained the same from three years ago also slid to 35 percent from 38 percent in 2004, Pulse Asia said. The survey, which comes ahead of May's midterm elections, had a 2.3 percentage points error margin.

A fish now or how to fish?

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 02:04:00 +0000

DEMAND AND SUPPLY By Boo ChancoThe Philippine Star 03/28/2007

A Social Weather Stations survey earlier revealed that at least one in five Filipino households or a total of 3.4 million households experienced starvation at least once in the past three months. Hunger went up by three points in Metro Manila, from 17.7 percent in November last year to 20.7 percent in February 2007. It rose slightly in the rest of Luzon from 17.7 percent to 18.3 percent, and hardly changed in Mindanao, from 22.3 percent in the previous quarter to 22.7 percent. Hunger declined by nearly four points in Visayas, from 19 percent in November to 15.3 percent in February.

26 MILLION FILIPINOS SUBSIST ON 72 CENTS A DAY

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 05:57:00 +0000

By: Katherine Adraneda, PhilStar.Com

Manila – Twenty six million Filipinos can be considered poor, each subsisting on a meager budget of around P36 (around 72 cents) per day, mostly for food, the Global Call to Action Against Poverty-Philippines (GCAP-Philippines) said over the weekend.

GCAP-Philippines said that with such a measly amount for his day-to-day needs, a typical poor Filipino is on a “bad diet” and almost incapable of satisfying his other non-food needs like clothing and entertainment.

GCAP said government defines poor as “those who fall below the per capita povery threshold of P36 per person a day.”

This means a person needs to earn at least $13,113 (US$262.26) a year in order to live beyond the poverty threshold and be able to spend no less than P8,734 for “food needs” and P4,379 for “other basic needs.”

Over the weekend, GCAP-Philippines held “The 36-peso Challenge” to determine the acceptability of the per capita poverty threshold set by the government for each Filipino per day.

This reporter took part in the challenge, along with a single mother, a retiree, a housewife, and a college student. The “Challenge” only confirmed what had been held by many: P36 per day is not enough to satisfy even the most basic need of a Filipino.

“Definitely, we raise a resounding cry that ‘no, P36 is not enough’ … P36 will not lift the poor Filipinos out of their misery and help them live a life of dignity,” GCAP-Philippines said.

GCAP-Philippines said a 2001 study showed that over a third of Class E and over a tenth of Class D Filipinos had resorted to eating “surrogate ulam” and “new viands,” consisting of salt, soy sauce, bagoong (shrimp paste), pork lard, soft drinks or coffee because they couldn’t afford to buy vegetables, fish or meat.

Instant noodles, on the one hand, are now “being drowned” in water to provide full meal for many poor families. With scarce spending for food “there is a bleak future because of low nutrition levels,” GCAP said, adding that many Filipinos subsist on carbohydrate and calorie-heavy diets to keep hunger pangs at bay.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), according to GCAP, has expressed alarm over the country’s 30 percent child malnutrition rate which has persisted for over a decade.

Going a little hungry is healthy

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 04:01:00 +0000

DEMAND AND SUPPLY By Boo ChancoThe Philippine Star 11/06/2006

SWS reports that some 2.9 million Filipino families or 16.9 percent of a projected base of 17.4 million households experienced hunger in the past three months. That’s a real shame, not just for Ate Glue but for our society. If only the respondents were going hungry out of choice, rather than out of poverty, it wouldn’t be so bad. Latest reports from American health experts seem to indicate that going a little hungry is healthy, based on studies of laboratory mice, rhesus monkeys and even worms.

This is not to say that what is good for mice, monkeys and worms are necessarily good for humans. Nor would it be right to say that because the poor amongst us live like mice in crowded shantytowns or urban sidewalks, going a little hungry will also be good for their health. In fact, the Christian conscience in all of us who are overfed should be bothered by the results of this SWS survey.

According to SWS, there is an increase of more than 800,000 households experiencing severe hunger in September compared to June. Families who reported having gone hungry "often" or "always" went up by 4.6 percent in September from 3.4 percent in June. Those who experienced moderate hunger, or those who reported that they experienced hunger "only once" or "a few times" in the last three months, rose to 12.3 percent, or 2.1 million households, from 10.1 percent in the previous quarter.

If I were Ate Glue, I would say this hunger problem in our midst is not just a government concern. It should move everyone of us into action, or at the very least, eat less so that the money we can save from paying personal trainers and gym fees could be contributed to Caritas instead, for feeding the really hungry. I personally know that’s easier said than done. But it is one of those things we must try to do for our own good.

Survey: Hunger hits record high in the Philippines

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 05:28:00 +0000

Philippine Star
MANILA (AP) - The number of Filipinos who said they went hungry rose to a record high with nearly 17 percent of people surveyed saying they had nothing to eat at least once over a three-month period, a survey group said Friday.

Of the Filipino households queried, 16.7 percent reported experiencing hunger in the last quarter of 2005, the independent Social Weather Stations survey group said -- a record high since it began hunger surveys in mid-1998.

The survey also found those describing themselves as living in poverty rose to 57 percent from 49 percent in the previous quarter.

The SWS said the proportional figure, or an estimated 2.8 million families, surpassed the previous peak of 16.1 percent in March 2001. The proportion of people going hungry has been in the double-digits ever since the second quarter of 2004.

Forum for Family Planning and Development

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Sun, 05 Jun 2005 03:09:00 +0000

From: GMA’s lowest rating: A wakeup call - BABE'S EYE VIEW By Babe Romualdez - The Philippine Star 06/05/2005

But our real problem lies in the fact that we have the worst fiscal situation ever since time immemorial because of the large government debt that as of February this year has already hit P4.08 trillion, a population that’s growing by leaps and bounds that could reach 160 million by 2030. As a matter of fact, at the Forum for Family Planning and Development which I attended the other day, it was disclosed that 11 million Filipinos are confirmed to be going hungry, 18 million are undernourished, and 25.4 million or about one third of the population live in extreme poverty and subsist on P34 per day.

Hunger affects 13 percent of Filipino households

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 00:36:00 +0000

PhilStar.com 04/29 /2005

MANILA (AP) - Hunger stalks 13 percent of all Philippine households, a survey by an independent pollster showed Friday.

The Social Weather Stations' survey of 1,200 adults in the first quarter of this year also showed 41 percent of all working adults worry a great deal about losing their jobs, with the highest proportion in the southern Philippines, home to a three-decade Muslim insurgency.

SWS said the survey shows that unemployment is "disastrous to family well-being," with hunger among families of the unemployed at 15.9 percent.

The World Bank said nearly half of the 84 million Filipinos live below the poverty line of 2 US dollars a day. Unemployment, according to government figures, reached 11.3 percent as of January this year despite promises of new jobs.

Of those who said they have experienced severe hunger-- defined as going hungry often or always in the last three months-- 12 percent are from families of the unemployed, 10.7 percent belong to families of the self-employed and 6.4 percent are from households of government employees.

The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.

Poverty to remain a serious problem in the Philippines: economists

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Sat, 22 Jan 2005 02:04:00 +0000

MANILA : Poverty in the Philippines will remain a problem for years and government proposals to halve it by 2010 remain "unfeasible", according to economists. Former socioeconomic planning secretary and University of the Philippines (UP) economist Felipe Medalla was quoted in BusinessWorld newspaper as saying the government's failure to prioritize expenditures, given the little money it has, adds to the "improbability of resolving the poverty problem".

"Poverty will remain a serious problem in the Philippines for quite some time," Medalla said. "To begin with, it doesn't seem the government will be able to achieve its growth targets and it doesn't seem that it will be able to resolve its fiscal deficit." In 2003 government debt totalled 78 percent of gross domestic product while public sector debt stood at 138 percent of GDP. According to the World Bank some 51 percent of the country's 84 million people live on less than two dollars a day.

In a report on population and poverty published by the UP School of Economics last December it said that while countries like Thailand and Indonesia have managed to bring their population growth down over the past 30 years, the Philippines has not. It has been estimated that with the current rate of population growth of 2.3 percent the Philippine population could double within the next 30 years.

Channel NewsAsia

Poor Filipinos reduced to eating garbage

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Wed, 03 Nov 2004 05:30:00 +0000

By Neal Cruz - Inquirer News Service - Oct 22, 2004

TWO young children died the other day because they ate rotten food recovered from a garbage can and brought home by their father. Did you get that? Poor Filipinos have been reduced to eating garbage -- literally -- and are dying because of it.

As the cliché goes, they're caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. They'll die of starvation if they don't eat, but they'll die anyway if they eat the garbage that they are able to scrounge from the trashcans.

Can you see the irony? Officials of government financial institutions take home millions of pesos in salaries and politicians travel in style around the world and eat the most expensive steaks while their constituents eat garbage! Generals amass wealth and squirrel them away in other countries while the people whom they are sworn to serve wallow in poverty! Our own President travels all around the country and the world with a retinue, shakes hands and delivers speeches and cuts ceremonial ribbons, while her constituents living in appalling conditions not very far from Malacañan Palace are dying because they are forced to eat garbage!

Read more: Inquirer Opinion

There's The Rub : Hungry

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Tue, 02 Nov 2004 05:42:00 +0000

By Conrado de Quiros - Inquirer News Service Oct 07, 2004

I FIRST heard it at a meeting with Sixto Roxas and several other economic experts. The crisis staring the country in the face, they said, was not really a fiscal or financial one, it was a social one. Specifically, it had to do with hunger. That was what the figures were showing, and that was more and more likely to happen over the next several months. It wasn't just that the banks would go kaput, it was that the people would go hungry.

Well, the papers have just confirmed what they've known all this time. The good news is that hunger reached its highest peak not during Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's term but Joseph Estrada's, or shortly after Estrada's. That was in March 2001, a couple of months after Estrada was overthrown, when the incidence of hunger reached 16.1 percent. Though that happened in President Arroyo's time, we may safely conclude it was still the product of Estrada's mismanagement, a euphemism for the mess he made of this country.

The bad news is that the second highest incidence of hunger happened during President Arroyo's time. The even worse news is that it happened two months into her second term. Hunger rose spectacularly. It did so as prices soared, putting food and other necessities beyond reach of the poor.

Read More - Philippine Daily Inquirer

The “Perfect Storm” that is about to hit the Philippines

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Sun, 17 Oct 2004 21:37:00 +0000

Extreme poverty and hopelessness, the continued burden of rising costs, the utter lack of faith of people in their leaders, crime and corruption, the fiscal crisis — all these are combining in a force and fury crying out to explode in a perfect storm.

Read article of William Esposo of the Philippines Inquirer dated October 17, 2004

Poverty in the Philippines

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Sun, 19 Sep 2004 03:52:00 +0000

SAD STATISTICS

Despite the more-or-less sustained economic growth from 1985 to 1997, the poorest 20% of the population only improved their income 0.5% for every 1% growth in average income. In other words, they slipped further behind and income inequality became even more extreme.

MALNUTRITION and HUNGER

There are now approximately 4 million (32%) preschool children who are underweight-for-age, 3 million (20%) adolescents who are underweight-for-age, and 5 million (13.2%) adults who are chronically energy deficient. Vitamin A deficiency is a serious problem, with 7% of pregnant women and 8% of infants under six months being severely deficient. Iron deficiency anemia affects 57% of infants, 51% of pregnant women, and 46% of lactating women.

The primary cause of malnutrition is the inequitable distribution of food, which is related of course to poverty. The typical Filipino diet is grossly inadequate for energy and other nutrients, causing human bodies to compensate for inadequate energy intake by utilizing protein as an energy source; the usual result is PEM. This situation is unlikely to improve as long as an estimated 28 million Filipinos are unable to buy food to meet basic nutritional requirements.

Read More and click:
Clarence Henderson's Pearl of the Orient Seas

Philippines is now a case of humanitarian disaster

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Wed, 18 Aug 2004 15:27:00 +0000

Open letter to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo from the Citizens Committee on the National Crisis

Dear Madam President:

The Philippines is now a case of humanitarian disaster. Late last year, the Food and Nutrition Research Institution of the Department of Science and Technology (FNRI-DOST) released a survey finding that “8 out of 10 households are hungry.” This is the first time, to our knowledge, that the government, through an important agency, acknowledged the fact that mass hunger -- and not only mass poverty -- now grips the lands.

The reported FNRI-DOST finding that 8 out of 10 households are hungry, if true, can only mean that the Philippines has become a case of humanitarian disaster warranting the urgent concern of the international community and a program of international aid and assistance.

The human dimension of the FNRI-DOST statistic is reflected in this news report: “Mothers now selling their babies, while fathers sell their kidneys, and farmers eat field rats.”

The FNRI-DOST finding, Madam President, was made public through the November 2, 2003, issue of Today, which front-paged the story. But that story didn’t elicit any public reaction, even from the media. Today appears to be the only paper that published it.

The explanation for the public indifference, one supposes, is that the finding was just another piece of gloomy statistic, and the public has been numbed by gloomy statistics. But perhaps, if one recognized the human dimension behind that statistic, the conscience of a nation, heralded as the “only Christian nation in Asia,” might conceivably have been stirred, even if only a little, and even if only for a passing moment.

The statistic, Madam President, presented in human terms, explains why others are now selling their babies in Nueva Vizcaya, why farmers in rice-rich Nueva Ecija are scrounging for field rats to eat, and why infants in the nation’s public hospitals including the PHG -- are dying every day.
It might also explain why a devoted family man was impelled to leave home to work abroad, even in a terror-stricken land like Iraq. He had to eat and earn enough to enable the loved ones he left behind also to eat.

Angelo de la Cruz, Madam President, isn’t the symbol of the new Filipino heroism that your corny press relations people describe him to be. Angelo de la Cruz is the symbol of the humanitarian disaster that has engulfed this nation.

Hunger, Madam President, is the problem. Not the “fiscal-debt crisis” so ponderously written about by those U.P. economists. And to focus on the “fiscal-debt crisis,” particularly after the fact of mass hunger had been formally acknowledged by a government agency, is to say the least, weird and even funny if it weren’t so weird. For the so-called fiscal-debt crisis is merely symptomatic of a social cancer that is eating one’s intestine away, symptomatic, that is of the conditions that have brought the mass hunger about. And to focus on the “fiscal-debt crisis” at this time is to trivialize a natural disaster. It is even to trivialize the Office of the President.

It isn’t the “fiscal-debt crisis” that has brought about the hunger, Madam President. For this nation has been in the grip of mass hunger long before the FNRI-DOST released its finding officially confirming the fact and certainly long before the “fiscal-debt crisis” came about and about which the UP economists so scholarly write about.

Mission of HIHM International

noreply@blogger.com (Admin) — Sun, 01 Aug 2004 01:21:00 +0000

1. To further the social, cultural, educational, economic, spiritual, emotional and general well being of the youth by promoting and organizing community improvement and personal character development activities;
2. To establish facilities for spiritual care and leadership training to: (a) impart basic Christian moral values among youth;and (b) equip the youth to become catalysts of positive change in their communities;
3. To support Christian ministries working to advance the Gospel of Jesus Christ among: (a) the youth, (b) the "unreached" ethnic minority groups of the Asian nations;
4. To encourage, facilitate, administer, and manage gifts and donations to further the purposes and objectives of the foundation; and
5. To exercise any and all powers, rights and privileges to accomplish any of the purposes and objectives of the foundation.