Bayan-Anihan Launched
Gawad Kalinga and the Department of Agriculture have joined forces to eradicate hunger in the country while engaging the GK communities, local government, schools and private sectors.
The multi-sectoral effort to address hunger was inspired by the report that the problem of hunger in the Philippines dropped significantly from 23.7% to 15.5% in the past three months, according to the recent Social Weather Station survey. This development further ignited efforts to push for sustainable programs for food sufficiency in key provinces nationwide.
On March 28, 2009, GK and the Agriculture department officially launched Bayan-anihan, the food-sufficiency program of Gawad Kalinga which M aims to remove hunger by empowering families to produce their own food for their own consumption. The program seeks to launch 2,500 farms in the next 3 years to feed at least 500,000 people for life.
The D-day signaled the start of the first batch of almost 100 Bayan-anihan sites to rise all over Luzon. A Bayan-anihan Planting Day ceremony was held at GK Nuestra Senora de la Soledad Village, Brgy. Tabon, San Isidro, Nueva Ecija. In attendance were DA Secretary Arthur Yap, Bayan-anihan champion John Concepcion, San Isidro Mayor Sonia Lorenzo, Globe Telecom: chief Gerry Ablaza, GK chairman Joe Tale and nation-builder Tony Meloto, along with leaders and students from Central Luzon State University (CLSU) and GK volunteers who all came together to finally say Goodbye Gutom!
The planting ceremony also signaled the simultaneous planting held in various sites in Luzon on the same day dubbed as “SaBAYANg PagtaTANIM,;” where GK communities, started planting their own vegetable farms all over Metro Manila, the Ilocos Region, Cordillera Autonomous Region, Cagayan Valley, Central Luzon, Calabarzon and Mimaropa.