Making do, but not without

The next time your child complains about his allowance, tell him that children in public elementary schools are allotted only P15 per meal under the Department of Education’s (DepEd) school-based feeding program (SBFP).

Milet Esguerra, who heads the
STLC feeding program,
interacts with the kids.

“We’re giving a little more per child at the Tabangao Elementary School,” says Milet Esguerra, who heads the feeding program of the Shell Tabangao Ladies Circle (STLC) in Batangas City.  She smiles when I appear shocked, but she’s done her research. 

The DepEd’s SBFP allocates a total of P16 per child (P15 per meal; P1 for logistics like cooking utensils, office supplies for reports, minimal transportation expenses, water, LPG, charcoal, firewood, and kerosene) for 120 days. Even privately-funded feeding programs like Jollibee’s “Busog, Lusog, Talino (BLT)” and Ateneo de Manila University’s “Blueplate” allot P11 and P11.50 per child respectively.

I cannot teach you

Image borrowed from Duke TIP website

In my years of editing, I have been blessed to work with writers who are able to discern their mistakes through the edited work, and be guided accordingly.

On occasion though, I have also found myself actually writing down the mistakes, pointing out the grammatical errors, explaining why it is wrong, and showing how things can be simpler and more cohesive. It is during these instances that I realize that there are just some things that I cannot teach:

Birds cry, too

I’m one of those who frown on making pets out of birds. I think it is cruel to restrain them in a cage when they can have the whole sky.

However, I found myself reviewing that notion when workers found a kilyawan (Black-naped oriole) hanging by its leg from a branch on a tree beside our house.  At first, I thought that the men were reaching up with a stick to get at a mango before I realized two things: it wasn’t a mango tree; the “mango” (the kilyawan is a yellow and black bird), was fluttering its wings.