Davao City – Over 200 community volunteers from 11 Kalahi-CIDSS implementing municipalities participated in the recent Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Leadership Training for Community Volunteers.
Divided into four (4) batches, the training spanned from August to September.
Volunteers come from Braulio E. Dujali, Baganga, Don Marcelino, Jose Abad Santos, Kiblawan, Lupon, Malalag, Montevista, San Isidro of Davao del Norte, Sta. Maria, and Saranggani.
The two-day training aims to enable community volunteers recognize their leadership strengths and weaknesses, explain key leadership concepts and functions, and enumerate crucial skills necessary for an effective leader to guide his followers.
Discussed during the training were Self-Disclosure and Personal Effectiveness, Leadership and Its Basic Concepts, Important Skills of an Effective Leader, and the Importance of Advocating Community Driven Development (CDD) as Local Leaders.
Kalahi-CIDSS municipalities are now on its 3rd cycle of implementation. Local leaders in the community are geared towards advancing Community Driven Development to help push for the institutionalization of the program.
“Our goal is to make our community volunteers as advocates of the program and have them endorse CDD as an effective development strategy. As we hope to present irrefutable, evidence based-gains like CDD adoption, ordinances, and impact of Community Driven-Development (CDD) as basis for approval of the successor program,” stressed DSWD Regional Director Mercedita P. Jabagat.
Advancing community driven development
During the workshop, they were given the chance to come up with actions plans and mechanisms on how to incorporate the CDD process in their barangays.
“The leadership training is pivotal because it will hone not only the leadership skills of our community volunteers, but also to come up with strategies on how to advocate Community Driven Development (CDD). Moreover, it is important to mobilize them to create initiatives, bank experiences of their activities and projects that adopt the CDD process,” said Nick Elvi D. Digol, Deputy Regional Program Manager for Kalahi-CIDSS.
To date, there are 17, 269 trained community volunteers of Kalahi-CIDSS in Davao Region; 45.75% of these are male while 54.25% are female.
“Ang Kalahi-CIDSS wala lamang kini nag hatag og mga proyekto nga makatabang sa atong mga problema, gitagaan pud kita og higayon nga makaapil sa mga trainings aron matabangan ang lokal nga panggamhanan pag dumala sa kalambuan. Ang programa nitabang nga mapalig-on ang atong relasyon diha sa komunidad alang sa kalampusan sa mga proyekto nga atong gihaguan, mga proyektong ato ra gidamgo sa una (Kalahi-CIDSS did not only provide projects to help us solve our problems, we were also given a chance to attend trainings to enable us help our barangay in managing development. The program helped strengthen our relationships in the barangay towards the success of our hard-earned projects which were merely dreams before),” said Nestor L. Cabatic, 59, Kalahi-CIDSS Barangay Sub-Project Management Committee (BSPMC) chair from Sta. Maria, Davao Occidental.
On its 3rd cycle of implementation, the 11 municipalities will have a total grant allocation of Php 173, 980,750.00.
Kalahi-CIDSS or Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services is one of the programs of DSWD that uses the CDD approach to empower local communities to undertake their own development projects by actively and directly partaking in local governance in identifying their community needs as well as taking part in implementing projects that will address these needs. (DSWD)