BALINDONG, Lanao del Sur – Amid the persistence of high food prices, the World Food Program (WFP), the United Nations’ food assistance arm, announced on Monday that it would continue its food-for-education project in Mindanao for the incoming school year.

“It’s even more important today for the WFP to provide the food assistance,” Valerie Guarnieri, WFP Country Director for the Philippines, told a gathering of parents and teachers in Lilud-Raya village here.

But Guarnieri said the WFP would be cutting back on the number of beneficiaries for school year 2008-2009 owing to the pressure of high food prices on its resources.

The program procures rice in the international market the prices of which have gone up by 40 to 60 percent, she explained.

From 40 percent, food supplies will now account for 60 percent of WFP’s operations in the country, she further noted.

But she said this might only be temporary as the program will be expanding the number of target beneficiaries as soon as resources, which normally come from donations, increase through more intensified campaigns and appeals.

Guarnieri’s announcement came after a discussion with the parents and teachers about the food supply situation in the town and their difficulties in coping with the high price of rice.

In this mountainous town on the side of vast Lake Lanao, rice can be had at P45 per kilo. Traditionally, rice supply comes from Marawi city.

“It is very disturbing to hear how much high (rice) prices are affecting you,” Guarnieri told the gathering.

The National Food Authority sells cheap rice, but only in Marawi City, a 30-minute ride away.

“Back when rice was still cheap, they even had difficulty having adequate food,” Guarnieri later told reporters in a press conference in Marawi.

The WFP, which aims to reduce the effects of high food prices among the poor and those caught in conflict and natural disasters, has described the high food prices as a “silent tsunami threatening to plunge more than 100 million people on every continent into hunger.”

Guarnieri was worried that the hunger-stricken families would, among others, most likely decide against sending their children to school.

The WFP noted in a study that 40 percent of parents who do not send their children to school cite lack of food as a big contributing factor.

The food-for-education program, the WFP’s major program in the country that ran from July 2006 to April 2008, focused on conflict-affected areas in six Mindanao provinces. It seeks to help bring and keep children in school.

The program provides 12.5 kilos of rice each month for every pupil from Grade 1 through Grade 6 on the basis of 80 percent proven school attendance.

Within two years, the program was able to assist nearly 187,000 children attending classes in 800 primary schools. It has also provided hot meals onsite to 16,000 children in 277 schools and daycare centers.

Another change in the program is its focus on fewer geographical areas, usually towns, but intensified coverage of the population within an identified target area.

Mishael Argonza, WFP’s national program officer, said they will choose, based on a set criteria, towns in the conflict-affected areas to be covered by the program and then pour its food assistance on as many deserving people as possible.

This way, the program is able to have a focal impact, said Argonza.

Guarnieri visited Lanao del Sur Monday along with popular television personality KC Concepcion, WFP Deputy Country Director Alghassim Wurie, and Cetin Yalcin, Country General Manager of global express delivery service firm TNT, in a bid to raise public awareness and understanding about hunger.

Concepcion is WFP’s national ambassador against hunger in the Philippines, while TNT is its global partner in food assistance operations.

The visit in Lanao del Sur is a prelude to the launch on June 1 of “End Hunger: Walk the World,” a global advocacy by the WFP in partnership with TNT to raise more resources for food assistance in Mindanao.

WFP, the world’s largest humanitarian agency, handed out last year food to 88 million people, mostly women and children, in 78 of the world’s poorest countries.

After closing its 24-year operations in the country in 1996, the WFP returned in 2006 to contribute to a peaceful resolution of the conflict in Mindanao, by addressing the food security needs of vulnerable people in conflict-affected areas.