By the Philippine Information Agency
Poor still, but Boholanos have now found a tool to fight poverty off their backs.
All it took was converging otherwise scant resources, empowering people to grapple and improving local governance and the chances of pinning down poverty gets better.
At least residents of Hagbuyo, in San Miguel, about 88 kilometers along the interior route from Tagbilaran, have seen a glimmer of hope.
Hagbuyo is an ordinary traditional farming community. Here, residents have barely manage to reap enough to cross the lines out of poverty.
But, San Miguel is an identified Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan – Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services (KALAHI-CIDSS) site, and through it, local officials saw a way.
Short of funds to implement poverty denting projects in the barangay, local officials now partner and pool with fund sources, while spurring committed participation from the community.
KALAHI-CIDSS, recognized by the World Bank as among the worlds top community driven development (CDD) approaches to project implementation has also elated government workers who can link and partner with the local community in decisions and resources, says Kathee Sanchez of the regional Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) in Cebu.
KALAHI-CIDSS is also the President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo administration's flagship anti-poverty project implemented by DSWD.
In Hagbuyo, residents implement a project they planned and decided, one commonly needed among all of them: small water impounding systems (SWIS) projects.
With the 10 SWIS, and an aid from the government's agriculture agency, residents double their productivity by making farm irrigation possibile while harvesting fish, added Annalyn Lumactud, Kalahi San Miguel coordinator.
The projects cost P681,532,000 but the DSWD only put up a little more than P413T, the rest is shared by the municipal, barangay governments and the residents in the communities where the project is implemented, Lumactud added in a phone interview.
According to her, after countless coordinations and consultative meetings, the residents put up impoundings systems, managed and maintained by them.
The SWIS projects, one of the many KALAHI community managed projects meritted the credits of an American intern who hailed the implementation of the government's poverty-alleviation through the CDD approach.
Liz Fleshman, who integrated herself in Hagbuyo did a comprehensive perspective of the impact of World Bank-funded projects, which also brought her to Pilar, in Bohol.
In San Miguel, she stayed with the community for three days, interviewing Area Coordinating Teams (ACT), municipal and barangay leaders as well as the Barangay Sub-Project Management Committees. She also talked to implementing agencies, non-governmental organizations, community associations and local people.
Among all projects she saw, the rain water collector which doubles as a fish pond in Hagbuyo was what she called "innovative".
"The rain water collector was the most creative project I visited in the Philippines," she said.
Built as a sprinkler system for rice which needs regular water supply, the community put up their labor equity to build 20 x 20 water impounding systems, 10 of them at slightly elevated levels and installed drains to let water out to be distributed to nearby rice fields.
Before the water collector, farmers harvested five sacks of rice per average field. Now the fields yield 26 sacks. Furthermore, they purchased 500 tilapia fingerlings for each water collector, creating a sustainable supply of fresh fish for project beneficiaries, she said.
She also noted that the community put up rules at the site, instructions against swimming, catching fish with nets, putting carabaos to dip, Fleshman narrated in her report to the World Bank.
Meanwhile Sanchez said, volunteers dared local leaders to provide more Community driven development (CDD)-oriented programs at the grassroots level during the recent simultaneous inauguration of four KALAHI-CIDSS-funded sub-projects in Mabini.
In Central Visayas, KALAHI-CIDSS is implemented in 14 municipalities, 12 of which are in Bohol, while the other two are in Siquijor.
In Bohol, the KALAHI-CIDSS areas include Danao, CPG, Talibon, Bien Unido, Buenavista, Getafe, Carmen, Pilar, San Miguel, Mabini, Trinidad and Ubay, she said.
Now, as to the question, is the bottom-up Kalahi startegy enough to unlock the grip of poverty, it may yet need a long reply.
But for residents, just as long as the government bottom-up approach is approach in its implementation strategy, community volunteers of four barangays in Mabini, Bohol clamor for more CDD programs.
No comments:
Post a Comment