MANILA — A total of 5,387,000 households stand to benefit from the government’s poverty alleviation program nationwide, an official of the Department of Social Welfare and Development said on Tuesday.
During the DSWD Knowledge Management forum in Quezon City, Undersecretary Maria Lourdes Jarabe said “Kalahi-CIDSS (Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan-Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services) is one of the government’s poverty-alleviation programs implemented by the DSWD, which uses the community-driven development (CDD) approach that empowers communities.”
“The CDD approach empowers communities in 847 targeted poor and disaster-affected municipalities in 14 regions to identify their own needs, and collectively implement and manage solutions to these needs,” she added.
By the end of President Rodrigo R. Duterte’s term in 2022, the DSWD hopes to help in reducing the poverty incidence rate to 14 percent from the current 22 percent.
As of June this year, there a total of 5,387,000 households had been targeted to benefit from the KALAHI-CIDSS project, 5,161,000 of which, are enrolled in the DSWD, which is 96 percent accomplished.
The program started in 2003, covering 200 poor municipalities and benefitting approximately 1,345,757 households in 6,101 barangays (villages).
The coverage ballooned to 847 municipalities in 2014, 554 of which were affected by Typhoon Yolanda, after it scaled up to become a national program in response to a strong demand from partner local government units (LGUs) and communities and the support of the Human Development and Poverty Reduction Cluster.
The program is funded by the national government, along with development such partners as the World Bank (WB) and Asian Development Bank (ADB).
Under the KALAHI-CIDSS-National Community-Driven Development Program from 2014-2019, the ADB has provided a PHP15.1-billion loan and the WB has provided a PHP19.4-billion loan, the national government, LGUs and community counterpart provided a PHP9.3-billion fund.
Among the projects under the program are the basic access infrastructure in barangays, skills training and community building, and eco-tourism sub-projects, among others.
In 2012, 1.2 million poor households have benefitted such that 5,949 sub-projects worth PHP6.4 billion in 6,167 barangays were completed from 2002-2012.
To implement such projects, there are now 35,000 barangay action plans submitted to the LGUs.
The program is designed to empower communities that plan to use barangay grants effectively, improve households’ access to basic services and good governance, and poverty reduction.
It helps ensure a truly people-centered development by providing development assistance, capacity-building, and implementation support to poverty-disadvantaged and disaster-affected municipalities. (Perfecto Raymundo, Jr./PNA)
