KALAHI-CIDSS covers 20 towns in Western Visayas
Some twenty (20) municipalities in Western Visayas are now covered by the KALAHI-CIDSS or the Kapit Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan-Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services.
KALAHI-CIDSS is the government's top poverty alleviation project. It banks on empowering communities to identify and push for interventions that would best respond to their immediate needs while helping improve local governance.
According to Information Officer Alma L. Jornadal of the Department of Social Welfare and Development, Region 6, KALAHI-CIDSS has been helping fund capability-building trainings, community support services and basic social services since 2003 through the flagship of the Department of Social Welfare and Development.
Jornadal said the Project has so far covered 20 municipalities in the provinces of Iloilo, Capiz and Negros Occidental.
Meanwhile, delegates from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) visited the municipality of Moises Padilla in Negros Occidental recently to assess the impact of KALAHI-CIDSS' community-driven development (CDD) approach.
With Moises Padilla Mayor Francisco Nazareno and other municipal officials, the community interaction was conducted by the foreign delegation in Brgy. Quintin Remo, the barangay being a recipient of a hanging footbridge project under Cycle 1 of KALAHI-CIDSS.
Aside from the hanging footbridge in Brgy. Quintin Remo, Moises Padilla has also availed of four other projects under KALAHI-CIDSS that include health stations, spillway and potable water system.
Clifford Chi Burkley of ADB-Philippines said the visit is part of the team's field experiential learning on CDD. Lessons gathered from the visit through interactions with local officials, people's organizations and community volunteers would provide inputs to determine the strengths of the approach particularly along the sustainability aspect of completed projects, he said.
The team was headed by Robert J. Dobias, Director of the Gender and Social Development Division of ADB. With him were Xia Gensheng, Zheng Wenkai and Wang Huixian from the People's Republic of China; Ganesh Prasad Pandeya, Hari Prasad Sharma and Dilip Bahadur Karki from Nepal; Niny Khor of Malaysia; Grant Curtis of Canada; Marcus Vorphal of Germany; Ron Slangen and Chris Spohr from the United States of America; Myagmar Dovchin of Mongolia; and Jennifer de Castro and Mario Randolph N. Dacanay of ADB-Philippines, Jornadal said. (PIA 6)