DAVAO City-The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) formally launched Listahanan, the regional profile of who and where the poor families are.

Regional Director of DSWD Priscilla N. Razon emphasized in her message that the national assessment is the department’s initiative to establish a list of poor families needing social protection programs from both government and non-government agencies.

Director Razon said, “It is important for our partners to know about Listahanan because it will always be the basis on the poor families to be enlisted in the various poverty alleviation programs and services.”

Identification of beneficiaries for social protection programs such as Social Pension, Pantawid Pamilya and issuance of PhilHealth Cards was based on Listahanan, Director Razon added.

NHTSPR was rebranded into Listahanan with a new logo to make it more fitting to the system’s operations and objectives and for easy recall of the brand.

The activity was participated by disaster focal persons and social workers of local government units, and representatives of non-government and media organizations.

National Household Targeting Office (NHTO) Regional Field Coordinator Mae P. Valentin emphasized Listahanan’s vital role in improving the lives of the poor.

“The regional profile [Listahanan] will be our official tool in really targeting the real poor and accessing to them the necessary and appropriate programs.”

She stressed the department’s mandate to continuously provide technical assistance to LGUs, NGAs and other stakeholders for the effective implementation of pro-poor programs and services.

Further, Valentin discussed the project cycle of Listahanan -preparatory phase [identification of areas], data collection and analysis, validation phase and report generation.

In the first round assessment, DSWD Davao Region has enumerated a total of 547,775 households and 272,933 were identified poor.

The upcoming second round targets 793,770 households.

Rural areas will be saturated during the enumeration while urban areas will be enumerated per pockets of poverty. (DSWD)