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“Miss, is the milk ready?” Every week, students of the Yunlin Qiaohe Elementary School go to the school lunch manager’s office during the second recess on Mondays and Fridays to receive fresh milk sponsored by CDF. For children living in a remote countryside, having access to fresh milk twice a week is really a privilege.

Small schools in remote countryside in Taiwan are struggling to keep children well-fed during lunchtime. With limited budgets, they can only spend NT$19-45 buying ingredients for each student, so serving fresh milk and fruit twice a week is virtually impossible. CDF is aware of the budget problem common to remote schools, and has thus introduced the CDF Nutrition 100 program in 2005 to help students in remote areas. Before the commencement of the 2018 fall semester, CDF allocated NT$6.6mn for 204 middle schools and primary schools in the remote areas of Taitung, Yilan, Changhwa, Nantou, Yunlin, Chiayi, Pingtung, Kaohsiung, Taoyuan and Hsinchu, benefitting over 10,000 students.

The program aims to ensure students receive balanced nutrition from school lunches. Guan Su-wen, school lunch manager of the Taitung Chulai Primary School, which CDF has sponsored for three straight years, said the children are very active, and they often participate in training for dodgeball, football, and track and field contests. The monthly NT$900 lunch fee students pay and government grants alone are not enough to buy food that keeps their daily nutrition intake at the government’s recommended level. The Chulai Primary School has a total of 54 students. With the additional sponsorship from CDF, students can drink fresh milk three times a week, and their physical conditions have almost reached the optimal level.

School administrators are given the flexibility to use the funds to purchase a variety of ingredients for school lunches. Some serve brown rice, multigrain rice and rice with sweet potato to keep children interested in eating carbs, while others purchase more fish and meat (even chicken thighs, which are considered to be the best part of a chicken in Taiwan) for students’ enjoyment. There are also schools that use the money to serve a decent breakfast once a week. Students and teachers will dine together, and teachers will play educational videos to help students cultivate healthy dietary habits.

In addition to students in remote areas, the Nutrition 100 program also reaches out to schools in suburbs. Liao Yu-chi, Director of General Affairs of the Nantou Wenshan Elementary School, said that some schools in the suburbs also lack resources and are in need of additional funding, but they are usually overlooked because people and the government tend to think schools in mountainous areas need help more desperately, and thus concentrate their donations and subsidies to mountainous schools only. With the additional funding from the Nutrition 100 program, students of the Wenshan Elementary School can now have fresh milk and seasonal fruit in their lunch once a week. “The children always look forward to the day with milk and fruit,” said Liao when expressing gratitude to CDF.

Investment in the next generation has always been the centerpiece of CDF’s philanthropic efforts. The Nutrition 100 program is all about improving the dietary quality and quantity for school children. It is the genuine hope of CDF that all children can have access to balanced and healthy food at school.

CDF Nutrition 100 program benefitting over 10,000 students in remote areas