World Bank lauds DSWD’s poverty reduction initiatives

CEBU, Philippines – A twelve-man team from the World Bank and AusAID has lauded the government’s anti-poverty program for being efficient and the best ongoing initiatives.

The team led by Bert Hofman, World Bank’s country director in the Philippines, East Asia and the Pacific, and Titon Mita, minister counselor of AusAID, visited Barangay Sawang Calero in Cebu City and Ayungon, Tayasan, Dumaguete City and Sibulan in Negros Oriental where the poverty reduction initiatives are being implemented by the Department of Social Welfare And Development.

These poverty reduction initiatives are known as the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) and the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR).

The team talked to the project implementers and partners and visited facilities like health centers, day care centers and elementary schools. The team held a dialogue with the program beneficiaries and was impressed by their testimonies.

World Bank recognized NHTS-PR and 4Ps as two of the best on going poverty reduction initiatives. 4Ps is a poverty reduction strategy of the government that provides conditional cash transfer to extremely poor household to break the poverty cycle by addressing the issues of low educational achievement, high maternal and infant mortality rate, high malnutrition rate and high rate of child labor among poor while NHTS-PR is an information management system that identifies who and where the poor are in the Philippines.

The data collected from the system establishes a socio-economic data base of household that will be used in identifying beneficiaries of current and future national social protection programs for the poor. PBSP to hold reforestation caravan

The Philippine Business for Social Progress will hold its largest reforestation caravan on June 19 where more than 600 volunteers from different institutions committed to take active role in protecting Cebu’s environment by planting trees at the onset of rainy season.

For this year’s kick off day of the reforestation caravan, PBSP targets to plant more than 200,000 tree seedlings in about nine hectares of lot in Sitio Cantipla I and II in Barangay Tabunan.

Small and medium enterprises who have already committed to participate in the activity include San Miguel Corporation, Jollibee Foods Corporation-Visayas and Mindanao, Cebu Daily News, Punongbayan and Araullo, Qualfon Philippines Incorporated, Primary Structures Corporation, Lexmark International Philippines Incorporated, TMX Philippine Incorporated, Cebu Energy Development Cooperation and Cebu Microelectronics Incorporated.

The reforestation caravan will run for 15 Saturdays starting June 19 until September 25. PBSP already got the commitment of over 1,000 planters from 31 institutions as of the first week of this month.

For the whole 15 Saturdays, PBSP targets to enrich 124 hectares of barren lot in the hilly lands, including that in Tabunan, by planting 300,000 endemic, fruit bearing and forest trees.

Companies that have already booked on Saturday are NKC Manufacturing Philippines Corporation, Dumaguete City Development Bank, Lear Corporation, Cebu Dynamic Youth, MSM Cebu Incorporated, Taiyo Yuden Philippines Incorporated, Vivant Corporation and Visayan Electric Company (Veco).

PBSP has been organizing annual reforestation caravans since 1988 in coordination with its member companies and other groups. It aims to reforest barren areas of the 29,000-hectare Central Cebu Protected Landscape, Metro Cebu’s main source of water.

PBSP is the largest corporate-led social development foundation in the country. It is the first of its kind in Asia leading the promotion and practice of Corporate Social Responsibility. — Jessica Ann R. Pareja/FPL   (FREEMAN NEWS)