Acting Social Welfare and Development Secretary Celia Capadocia-Yangco today said that the Department will intensify its Anti-Hunger Mitigation programs (AHMP) this year to address the "rising hunger incidence" as revealed in the fourth quarter survey of the Social Weather Station (SWS).  Acting Secretary Yangco stated that this incidence as analyzed by the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) is due to typhoons which devastated the country in the last quarter of 2009.

"The DSWD seeks to address hunger not only on the aspect of supply or the unavailability or insufficiency of food to eat, and on the aspect of demand or the inability to buy food but also on the values of the Filipinos about food and good nutrition," Acting Secretary Yangco explained.

According to her, the livelihood programs being implemented by the DSWD strengthen people's capacity to produce food, and on the part of the consuming public, strengthen their capacity to buy food or have access to sources of food.

Further, the hunger mitigation program is not limited to feeding. It includes activities on increasing food production, enhancing efficiency of logistics, and food delivery on the supply side; promoting good nutrition, and managing population on the demand side; and putting more money in poor people's pockets.

The DSWD actively participates in the implementation of livelihood activities, with its own anti-hunger programs, such as the Food for School, Tindahan Natin project, and the Healthy Start Feeding Program. Further, DSWD also created an NGO network to support feeding programs, done in close partnership with the Kabisig ng Kalahi, a non-government organization which provides supplemental feeding to poor children.

These livelihood programs are jointly implemented with members of the Anti-Hunger Task Force composed of the National Nutrition Council (NNC), Department of Agriculture (DA), and National Food Authority (NFA), as well as government agencies with micro-finance services.

"We focus on more aggressive micro-financing to enable more poor families to avail of government resources so they can start their small livelihood enterprise, "  Acting Secretary Yangco emphasized.