Women's advocate and Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte believed empowering women by giving them training, skills, and capital is one of the solutions to hunger in the family amid the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.
According to Belmonte, when a mother has the capacity to set up her own business and earn by herself, "she thinks first of her family and of her children."
"And that is why in our pandemic response, a big chunk of our recovery program, our funds for recovery go towards empowering mothers and women in general," Belmonte said on Tuesday during a panel discussion by the United Nations (UN) Philippines about impacts of the pandemic on food systems.
Currently, Belmonte said, the local government is helping its women obtain skills as well as build their own sari-sari stores and get capital investments after finding that some of their women voluntarily learned new skills during lockdown.
This is part of the solutions that the local government developed to address food security issues in the city amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The other solution is the setting up urban farms to provide livelihood to cooperative members and have a source of vegetables for its feeding program.
"When we were interviewing the women, they were saying they learned so many skills watching YouTube during lockdown and they just need capital to get themselves started," she said.
"And when they get started, they sell on Facebook Marketplace. So now, we're partnering with all these online platforms to help mothers on the ground to sell the different products that they have developed, including food, so that they can be empowered and can help their children and families," she added.