At NVC, our special occasions are always laced with meaning. Here’s how we celebrated our anniversary. And look who were our honored guests for lunch! Thank you The Visayan Daily Star for this feature.
Full text below:
“Negrense Volunteers for Change (NVC) Foundation, Inc celebrated its 9th year anniversary by harnessing its staff and volunteers to engage in an outreach activity on board the bus it calls the Mingoy Food Shuttle. Inaugurated only earlier this year, the bus conducted its usual package of activities which includes a film showing for kids on nutrition, dispensing 200 servings of Mingo Champorado from the mobile kitchen, and providing low cost groceries from its Good Food Grocer.
Highlight of the day was the attendance of Conrado Alisbo, his wife and his eight children who were introduced to the body during the lunch celebration. The NVC team had discovered the Alisbo family living under four umbrellas near the public plaza during their round on the Mingoy bus to serve Bacolod’s homeless on Ash Wednesday.
Since that discovery was posted by NVC on social media, the family had then been receiving a round of assistance which included the provision of a tricycle for his livelihood and the down payment of a 60 square meter lot for which he will paying a small monthly amortization in the next 20 years. A generous donor had also committed costs of a concrete house for the family, the construction of which started this week, the design and supervision of which are provided by volunteer architects.
Coincidentally, it was the birthday of Anesto, one of the Alisbo children, who was surprised by NVC with a cake with candles for him to blow. Conrado revealed that it was the first time that anyone in their family, including himself and his wife, that a member of their family had ever celebrated a birthday.
Obviously malnourished, NVC will enroll the Alisbo children into its Mingo Meals nutrition program. Mingo is an instant nutritious complementary food made of rice, mongo, malunggay and other natural ingredients manufactured by the foundation in an FDA accredited production plant. To date, more than 22,000 children have been enrolled in it’s six-month daily feeding program, having served 8,500,000 Mingo Meals across 39 provinces in the Philippines.
NVC has also provided 4,972 motorized boats to fishermen, built 211 classrooms, given 7,152 LoveBags which are backpacks filled with school supplies to children to indigenous peoples and provided more than 600 livelihood tools to skilled individuals who lack a single tool to increase income generation.
The foundation’s Artisans of Hope livelihood workshop produces creative art pieces which have recently been exhibited at the ArteFino show in Rockwell, Makati and in the forthcoming annual Negros Trade Fair.