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Over 200 Students at Tula Tula Elementary Receive Hot Meals Every Week

on  April 18, 2024

Paving the way toward brighter futures starts with a meal — and it starts with the commitment of Hunger Champions just like you, supporting our mission to end hunger! In the rural mountain region of the Philippines, students walk up to two hours to Tula Tula Elementary to receive quality education and nutritious meals. More than 200 students receive Rise Against Hunger meals distributed by in-country impact partner Convoy of Hope five times a week, serving kindergarten through sixth grade. The school also partners with Convoy of Hope on seeds and training for the school garden to grow a variety of crops, including vegetables, improving the students’ access to more diverse food.For students like Shane, a sixth grader at Tula Tula Elementary, the meals encourage her to attend school, providing hope for the future. She shared, “The food you served to us is very yummy and very nutritious. My favorite subjects are English and math. I always have perfect attendance, and I’m with honors.”

Marlon D. Asis, Head Teacher at Tula Tula Elementary

Tula Tula Elementary Head Teacher Marlon D. Asis says, “The feeding program helps our young children feed every day.” He added, “Since some are coming from far-flung areas here, and therefore, they don’t have to go home at lunchtime, and so they have to eat properly during the day time.” Parents of the schoolchildren volunteer, cooking the meals and adding vegetables grown in the school garden, like moringa.Leniel, a sixth grader at the school, says, “You gave a delicious and nutritious food to our school.” As a result, many more students continue to further their education due to the schools’ feeding program — which helps fulfill the hopes and dreams of children, leading to resilient and self-sufficient futures.Watch the video below to learn more about the school feeding program at Tula Tula Elementary and hear from students like Shane and Leniel who now have access to quality education and nutritious meals.In the Philippines, Rise Against Hunger supports programs that nourish people facing food insecurity and provide immediate nutritional assistance and lasting, long-term impact for real people, serving 1.73 million people each year.  When you support Rise Against Hunger’s mission, your gift leads to nourished lives and empowered communities. Join our movement to end hunger with a gift of $10 or more to ensure more children receive hot meals from school feeding programs in the Philippines and beyond.

About the Author

Maggie is Rise Against Hunger's Director of Marketing and Communications and has been a team member since 2016. Maggie works to spread the word about the mission to end hunger and to engage people globally to take action.

More Posts by Maggie Luckadoo

Strength, Stability And Hope

The gift that filled Nelly’s table.

“We were yielding very little, and the crops could not sustain us the whole year,” Nelly remembers. As a mother of seven and a farmer with two decades of experience, the stress of inconsistent yields was all-consuming. A poor harvest not only strained her family financially, but also limited their own meals to just two a day. Their story reflects that of many in their fishing and farming village near a lake in the Karonga district of northern Malawi. Here, heavy rainfall makes conventional farming methods nearly impossible. The entire village is, quite literally, saturated in food insecurity — a reality that leaves families struggling to survive season after season without a dependable source of nourishment.

In 2019, Nelly began participating in Harvesting Prosperity and Resilience, a sustainable agriculture project implemented by Rise Against Hunger in partnership with the Foundation for Community Support Services (FOCUS). The project works with 3,100 smallholder farmers in Malawi’s Karonga and Mzimba districts to strengthen food and nutrition security by improving production methods, nutrition practices and household income.

Just one year later, Nelly was ready to expand the variety of crops on her farm. What land once only produced maize began to flourish with sesame, cowpeas, rice and groundnuts during the rainy season (summer), as well as maize and vegetables during the dry season (winter). Through climate-smart agriculture training, she learned new techniques like manure making, pit planting and mulching, crop rotation and intercropping. Equipped with these tools, Nelly’s farm began to thrive.

After the 2023–2024 growing season, she sold enough produce to purchase an ox cart. Her harvests in 2024-2025 season yielded over 500 pounds of crops, including 22 bags of groundnuts, seven bags of maize, 12 tins of sesame and three bags of rice. With this surplus, she was able to invest in a motorbike, which she now uses to transport African doughnuts (mandasi) that she cooks and sells — creating yet another source of income for her family.

The transformation reaches far beyond her finances. Nelly now has the stability to provide for her husband and children. “I am able to eat different food types, pay school fees for my children and fulfill the visions that I have made with my family,” she beams. “I am now sleeping peacefully without any fears of food or paying school fees for the children.”

Her leadership has also grown. Today, Nelly serves as a leader in the Harvesting Prosperity and Resilience project, teaching other farmers in her district to adopt climate-resilient, labor-saving practices. By sharing her knowledge, she is multiplying her impact — empowering her neighbors to experience the same transformation she has achieved.

Across Nelly’s community, food and economic security are on the rise. Lombani, a government extension officer for the region, explains, “I can see the community is being transformed in the sense that in the area, there is food, income and nutrition security. Development is also happening at the household level.”

Nelly reflects on what it means to invest in holistic programs that address the root causes of hunger: “We are now healthy people. Children are going to school after eating their breakfast, having high yields and different types of crops due to conservation agriculture practices. With the support from the project, we have food, and we can access other food items from the market after selling our produce.”

This is the gift that fills: a future full of stability, strength and hope. It fills tables with food, families with security and communities with the resources to thrive. It’s an investment in futures rooted in resilience and hope.