PLDT and its wireless communications unit Smart Communications Inc. (Smart) joined the annual celebration of Nutrition Month and turned over ‘PlantSmart’ kits to select Metro Manila communities. PlantSmart is among the key programs under PLDT and Smart’s core advocacy of Food Security, which aims to help provide Filipinos access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food at all times.
“PLDT and Smart recognize the critical role of food security in the quality of life among communities. Our goal is to come up with solutions that will help address hunger-related challenges. Through our PlantSmart kits, we want to empower households and help them realize that producing their own food source at home is possible,” said Kristine Joyce Magadia, Stakeholder Management Lead for Livelihood and Food Security at PLDT and Smart.
PlantSmart is a home-based, small-scale agricultural program that encourages communities to plant and grow their own food supply, to help promote food security.
Each PlantSmart kit contains vegetable seeds, loam soil, and fertilizers. The kits also contain learning materials that may be accessed through a link to PLDT and Smart’s ‘Kalye Mabunga’ urban gardening web series that can help guide the residents in their planting journey.
About 60 families from Barangay Greater Lagro, Quezon City received their PlantSmart kits, that can also help provide the community with an alternative source of income while staying at home. PLDT and Smart also turned over 100 PlantSmart kits to members of the Ecology Ministry of St. Joseph Parish, Taguig and another 100 kits to the Diocese of Pasig.
“PlantSmart kits can help fight hunger in our community, and augment our food costs which then allows us to save,” said Jean Zambrano of St. Joseph Parish.
“We want to instill in our community the value of social responsibility, not just to our families but to the environment as well,” said Bro. Gilbert Masilang from the Diocese of Pasig.
This series kicks off the nationwide distribution of PlantSmart kits across Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao for the whole month of July.
PlantSmart and promoting food security underscore PLDT and Smart’s commitment to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal #2 of Zero Hunger.
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