In pursuit of its commitment to further improve citizen and community involvement and participation in the development process, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), through the Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services (KALAHI-CIDSS) is set to turnover more than 600 sub-projects to community-recipients within the first quarter of this year. 

With more than Php 558.7 million funds utilized, these community sub-projects will be turned over to the different localities in Regions I, II, CALABARZON, MIMAROPA, VII, IX, X, XI, and XII from January to March 2022. The sub-projects include construction of multi-purpose buildings, barangay health station, disaster response facility, isolation facility, corn and rice mill building, improvement of water system, provision of COVID 19 kits and medical tools, and installation of communication devices, to name a few. 

The KALAHI-CIDSS sub-projects aim to serve about 236,000 households in the said regions, with a goal of empowering the communities to achieve improved access to social services, by involving its members in more inclusive local planning and giving them control over decisions and resources.

KALAHI-CIDSS is a program that uses a community-driven development strategy to ensure people-centered development by providing assistance, capacity-building, and implementation support to poverty-disadvantaged and disaster-affected municipalities. Through the program, community members actively participate to identify and prioritize their community’s problems and allow them to design, implement, and manage solutions to their priority problems

Meanwhile, the DSWD targets to cover new areas, especially in poor and marginalized communities across the country, through the additional financing allotted to the program. The additional funding of KALAHI-CIDSS has an added layer aimed towards addressing the effects of COVID-19 pandemic. 

Remarkably, this step will pave the way to increase the scope of the program, covering 676 poor municipalities in 59 provinces across 15 regions. Of this total number of localities, 14% are the number of new covered areas. 

The additional funding for KALAHI-CIDSS is set to provide community grants to enable target municipalities to efficiently implement programs, projects, or services that will help its communities cope  with the adverse effects of the pandemic. 

With the additional financing in place, the DSWD takes another step forward in achieving the collective goal of inclusive and sustainable national development. ###