DSWD Secretary Corazon Soliman. INQUIRER.NET FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has enlisted three civic groups to provide sustainable livelihood assistance to beneficiaries of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), or the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program.
Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman recently signed a memorandum of agreement with Tulay sa Pag-unlad Inc. (TSPI), Ahon sa Hirap Inc. (ASHI) and the Ayala Foundation Inc. (AFI) for the implementation of a sustainable livelihood program that would provide “the bridge to self-sufficiency” to the beneficiaries.
“We know how to help people value themselves but we need a sustaining factor. This sustaining factor is the private sector, with whom the government shares the vision of inclusive growth,” said Soliman.
She said that as private and public sectors, “we have a unified mantra: Organize them for power and they will all be prosperous.”
TSPI and ASHI would provide “financial services in the form of credit, savings, microinsurance that are accessible to the poor,” she said.
TSPI will provide microfinance services with credit and savings plans and new repayment cycle models.
According to TSPI executive director Eduardo Mendoza, microenterprise groups like TSPI should have long been partnering with the government in its social welfare programs.
AFI president Maria Lourdes Heras-de Leon said she wanted to see the 4Ps beneficiaries in Metro Manila, Batangas and Palawan gainfully employed through the various labor-intensive projects of the Ayala group of companies.
She said the AFI was also committed to supporting the training activities for the 4Ps beneficiaries for livelihood and development, and eventually provide market opportunities to promising entrepreneurial beneficiaries. Cynthia D. Balana