Sagada elementary schools send food as mobile kitchen in Lipa cooks meals for Taal evacuees

Volunteers at a mobile crisis kitchen in Lipa, Batangas were on Sunday afternoon hard at work preparing dinner for hundreds of evacuees from the Taal Volcano eruption, as vegetables and other food items donated by elementary schools in Sagada arrived.

As seen in photos posted by journalist Howie Severino on his Facebook page, the vegetables, rice, and fruit arrived in sacks that bore messages of support from the young donors: "Be strong!" was written on one, sent "with love" from Balugan Elementary School.

The Art Relief Mobile Kitchen volunteers, meanwhile, were chopping up chicken and vegetables to prepare a hot meal of tinola for 1,300 evacuees in Tanauan during Severino's visit.

The kitchen was set up in the Redemptorist compound in Lipa, but the volunteers were preparing to move to a gym as truckloads of food donations poured in.

"Mobile kitchens are a noble and sensible disaster response—volunteers set up in gyms and schools, with evacuees themselves also helping out. These become morale-boosting communal activities where friendships are formed, food knowledge is exchanged, and vegetables and other fresh produce donations can be received and turned into hot and nutritious meals," Severino said in a post.

He added that Art Relief Mobile Kitchen founders Alex Baluyut and Precious Leano have been setting up these mobile kitchens in disaster-stricken areas since Typhoon Yolanda in 2013.

Taal Volcano has been in a state of unrest since Sunday, January 12, when it began spewing a kilometers-high column of ash into the sky.

Thousands of residents have been evacuated from the danger zone, while crops have been devastated and livestock and wildlife have been killed. — BM, GMA News