In her recent visit in the Cordillera Administrative Region, Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman has encouraged the region to continue its commitment for converged and sustained efforts towards development.
Sec. Soliman emphasized the agency’s perspective of a municipality as an area of operation where the municipality and the DSWD work as a team using the resources of the Department’s three core programs – the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services (Kalahi-CIDSS) Project and Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP). The Secretary also stressed out that it is the team’s responsibility to make sure that other protective services in the community are provided for, especially for the vulnerable sectors.
Sec. Soliman added that aside from the challenges in the communities, the region should be able to ensure that the Local Social Welfare and Development Offices are functioning.
Regional Director Leonardo C. Reynoso assured the Secretary that the region has already plotted its strategies for Convergence. Director Reynoso said that through the convergent efforts of the DSWD-CAR workforce, its partner NGOs, CSOs, and NGAs, more families, communities and municipalities will be able to improve their levels of well-being, from survival to subsistence and eventually to self-sufficiency.
“Our targets for 2014 can be reached through our new financial management policies, enhanced operation guidelines and the expansion of our programs”, Director Reynoso shared. “The upcoming second round of household assessment of Listahanan or the National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR), the expansion of Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program as well as the scale-up of Kalahi-CIDSS Project to National Community-Driven Development Program (NCDDP), and the conduct of the Convergence’s Social Welfare Indicator (SWI) Assessment are among the top priorities of the region for 2014”, Director Reynoso added.
“Our workers in the field are not only community facilitators, but bridging leaders because we will closely work not only with LGUs, we will converge with other national government agencies. As a convergent team, we do not only look forward to implement our programs and services, but we also aim for a disaster resilient team so that we can provide services even in the midst of calamities,” Director Reynoso said.
The DSWD Convergence Strategy is composed of poverty reduction programs including the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, Kalahi-CIDSS and SLP. The strategy which is also called Tatlong Sulo sa Pagpuksa ng Kahirapan or Tatsulo is implemented in complementation and synergy with all other social protection programs of the Department. This is to ensure that the clients or beneficiaries receive maximum benefits from the protective services of Pantawid Pamilya, transformative services of Kalahi-CIDSS to promotive services of SLP. It aims to target the poor through the Listahanan, integrated case management and holistic community development approach in response to the Millennium Development Goal’s (MDG) call to halve poverty incidence in the country. #DSWD-CAR, SOCIAL MARKETING UNIT, MAYROSE URBANO-CARIŃO
