Written by: Kuya Harvard De Baron, Founder
Since I started food blogging around two years ago, I have always envisioned a partnership with our NGO, U! Happy. While I went around the world, indulging in different cuisines, I also had a burden of supporting marginalized children. Happy not Hungry was a start of this collaboration, and I am positive more opportunities like this will arise in the future. Kids deserve better access to food, and I will be here, together with team U! Happy to bridge them with restaurants and other companies in the food industry.
U! Happy provides sustainable support and teach values to marginalized children. They organize a platform for sponsors and volunteers so they can reach out to beneficiaries with creative and meaningful activities. Since 2006, they have done an average of 200 events per year. U! Happy has partnered with individuals, companies, and other groups to aid our programs that have benefitted over 100 organizations focused on children around Metro Manila.
May 19th was a memorable day for all who took part of Happy not Hungry. Our beneficiaries that day were mostly children of our fallen and wounded soldiers who fought in Marawi. Since our modern heroes deserve to be remembered for protecting our country, we launched this activity one year after the start of siege.
Together with selected officers and members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, food sponsors, guardians and more than a hundred volunteers, we spent the day with a food trip, magic show and story telling with the kids. It was a well spent three hour program that ended with loads of grocery donation from various companies.
Personally my favorite part was the interaction between the kids and their Ates and Kuyas. Most of these sharing happened during the food trip, as they travelled in groups visiting one booth after another, doing a short activity first before accessing food or giveaways. Fourteen companies participated, namely Yakult, Buko Bar, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Gold Seas Tuna Chunks, Maya Kitchen’s Hot Cake Art, Jollibee, Kor BBQ, Potato Corner, Pitmasters Smokehouse Barbeque, Snack Attack, Frozen Treats, Sobrelato, Cheez Whiz and Vanderlust. Money Growers also took part via a significant money donation and WhenInManila.com assisted us in promoting the event.
Happy not Hungry was also about honouring our soldiers, so at the very last part, we watched a video about the war and visited a number of battle casualties in the AFP Medical Center wards.
It is only when we share our lives to others, we truly live. Thank you to everyone who believed in this project. It is definitely not the last collaboration between our soldiers and the different companies that shared their resources.
