Villar continues fight vs poverty through foundation
MANILA, Philippines—Even after his defeat in the May 2010 elections, Senator Manuel Villar continued his fight against poverty by providing free livelihood and entrepreneurship training for Filipinos through the Villar Foundation.
Villar and wife – former Las Piñas Representative Cynthia Villar – chairman and managing director of the foundation, respectively, recently led the ground breaking of a learning and training facility in Las Piñas City, which will be known as Social Institute for Poverty Alleviation and Governance or SIPAG Center.
The project, the senator said, was the foundation’s way of reaching out to a larger number of people and bigger sectors to arm them with knowledge and opportunity to beat poverty.
“Social enterprise experts say that poverty should be banished to a museum. I share their vision for a time when we can only see poverty showcased inside museums. Until that time comes, we will work towards helping ease Filipinos’ poverty because in our country, poverty is out there on the streets staring us in the face,” he said in a statement on Sunday.
Mrs. Villar said the SIPAG Center will house a resource center for poverty reduction, a reception hall, a theater, an exhibit hall, and Villar memorabilia hall.
Its library or the resource center will feature an array of reference materials on poverty reduction, livelihood generation, and entrepreneurship while the exhibit hall will feature the memorabilia of the senator and other relevant exhibits.
The reception hall and the theater, on the other hand, will be the venues of conferences, symposia, and screening of video or performances tackling the issues of and related to poverty reduction.
“The Villar SIPAG Center will be more than a showcase of the foundation’s projects and campaigns,” Mrs. Villar said.
“It will be a working, proactive center. From its name alone, people can tell that we promote industriousness or hard work to beat poverty. We will guide, train, teach and empower womenfolk, the youth, jobless and even relatives of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) persevere in life,” she pointed out.
While teaching know-how on different social enterprises for Filipino families, Mrs. Villar said the center would also provide parallel training on how to turn wastes into profitable use.
“We will conduct regular seminars as well as training sessions at the Villar SIPAG Center,” she said, “We hope to increase the number of participants and beneficiaries in our ongoing livelihood skills programs, which we have been doing for over a decade.”
