Angelika recently got the chance to speak at a webinar for OBPS (Olave Baden Powell Society).
Here, she talks about her experiences of being a Girl Powered Nutrition Advocacy Champion and representing WAGGGS as a delegate to Women Deliver, Vancouver 2019.
Before I was an advocate for nutrition I consumed a bottle of soda every day. What I didn’t know is that excessive intake of soft drinks with high sugar and acid content (both regular and diet) could cause detrimental impacts on my dental and general health including dental cavities, dental erosion, overweight, obesity and increased risk of Type 2 diabetes.
This story is one of the examples of how substantial the impact of being an advocate for nutrition is to my life. It gave me the knowledge that made my lifestyle and my eating habits better.
This knowledge didn’t only affect me, it also affected the people around me
Before I became an advocate for nutrition my family would buy instant foods like instant noodles and canned goods but since I became an advocate for nutrition and told my family about the lack of nutritional value in instant foods, my family started to always consider the nutritional value of the foods we buy.
Becoming a Women Deliver delegate
It's been a year since my trip to Vancouver, Canada as a WAGGGS Delegate at the Women Deliver conference where I met many wonderful women that also advocate for gender equality. It gave me an avenue to network and talk to people about my advocacy work in the Philippines and to also learn how other advocates deliver their advocacy work too. This is also where I first met Mr. Joel Spicer, CEO of Nutrition International, the primary sponsor of Girl Powered Nutrition and got engaged in talking about nutrition.
I also got the chance to meet some Girl Scouts of Canada at their event ‘Everything She Wants To Be’ where they displayed artworks of Girl Scouts depicting what they want to be when they grow up. In this same event, I met the Canadian Minister for Women and Gender Equality Ms. Maryam Monsef and even got the chance to talk to her about my advocacy work. This is the most memorable event in my time in Vancouver because at first I didn’t know she was the Minister for Women and Gender Equality of Canada, but she was so interested in hearing what I had to say.
I have also had the opportunity to be the presenter of our Girl Powered Nutrition information poster campaign where I introduced many other people to the Girl Powered Nutrition programme, what its objectives are and what problems it it solving in my country.
Recently, my co-Advocacy Champion, Marie Rosary Abellar and I have initiated a school tour where we influenced the student council of 57 schools around the Philippines to start up a project about well-balanced eating in schools.
July Nutrition Month
This month, the whole Philippine Advocacy Champion Team for Girl Powered Nutrition celebrated the July Nutrition Month here in the Philippines by educating Girl Scouts through nutrition-related games and activities, empowering them to experience being an advocate for a day through our Advocacy Bootcamp, and delivering webinars with the topics Achieving SDG 2: Zero Hunger with Ms. Hannah Graham and Stunting and Wasting in the Philippines with Ms. Rosario Monzales-Jupiterwala from WAGGGS.
Nutrition is still not a priority even today, when the world is facing a global health pandemic. We should be building our immune systems by eating healthy and by being aware of our food intake. Our Government should be promoting this but here in the Philippines, it's the least of their priority.
That's why Girl Powered Nutrition should continue empowering girls everywhere. This program enables girls to be an advocate for nutrition, supporting a whole generation, for our children and our future.