Foundation aims to bring 10M Mingo meals to undernourished children

BACOLOD City – Negrense Volunteers for Change (NVC) Foundation launched its campaign on June 12, 2019, for 10 million Mingo Meals as complementary food for undernourished Filipino children.

The group aims to reach this goal by January 2020.

Mingo is a nutritious instant complementary food made from locally sourced rice, mongo (mung beans), and malunggay (moringa).

The technology was developed by the Food and Nutrition Research Institute of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST-FNRI).

Through technical assistance from DOST-6 and DOST-FNRI, the NVC started commercial production of Mingo in 2011.

After eight years, NVC was able to produce more than 8 million Mingo Meals that fed more than 22,000 undernourished Filipino children.

Mingo comes in powder form and creates a porridge or drink when mixed with water. It can also be consumed straight from the sachet.

Because of its convenience and nutritional value, Mingo has also gained popularity as emergency food in emergency relief operations. It has been used to feed people in a number of disaster or emergency situations in the Philippines.

NVC Foundation President Millie Kilayko said that the foundation has helped feed more than 22 thousand children through more than eight million Mingo meals already and they hope to reach the balance of 1.7 million Mingo meals by January 2020.

“What we like to do now is to accelerate within the next seven months to reach the 10 million Mingo meals mark so that we can fast track and jump-start the development of more children,”, Kilayko said.

NVC Foundation was cited for providing 7,471,691 Mingo Meals to undernourished children. It also won a P200,000 cash prize given by from DOST Undersecretary Rowena Guevara and DOST FNRI Director Mario Capanzana.

NVC also received DOST FNRI’s “Technology Adaptor Innovation Award” in 2018 for successfully engaging various sectors, including local farmers producing the raw materials for the complementary blends, in addressing malnutrition among children. (DOST-6/J. R. A. Gabiota)