Australian grant to build classrooms and day care centers

The Australian government joins the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank among the grantees of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD)’s National Community Driven Development Program (NCDDP), giving A$12 million for the construction of early childhood and development centers.

Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) Deputy Secretary Ewen McDonald led the launch of the Australian grant for the promotion of early childhood care and development in the country. The construction of the day care centers will be led by barangay or community councils that have been by the DSWD in project planning, development and implementation.

The NCDDP framework also requires a beneficiary community or barangay to provide a counterpart fund of 15 to 20 percent of the project cost.

The A$12-million grant is projected to construct some 468 classrooms and day care centers.

Part of the criteria is that the communities should have the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, another poverty alleviation program of the DSWD that provides conditional cash transfers to qualified families so they can support the health and education of the children.

The project, which will run from 2014 to 2016, is part of the national government’s post-disaster recovery and rehabilitation following Typhoon Yolanda.

Approximately 117 of its target 468 classrooms and day care centers will be constructed in Yolanda-affected areas.

Prior to the provision of the said grant, the DFAT had extended a $10-million grant in 2012 for the construction of school buildings and day care centers in 200 municipalities.

Originally meant to cover the construction of 515 such structures, the program was able to build 626 structures through savings, generated partly because of the community-driven development (CDD) strategy of the program, in which residents themselves work to implement their identified subproject.

The day care centers and school buildings benefited some 102,213 households, with 15,584 students able to study in the said facilities.

CDD focuses on empowering and building up the capacities of citizens and local government units so they will be able to lift their own communities out of poverty, giving them the opportunity to make informed decisions on locally identified options for development and manage resources to implement sub-projects that address the needs they have identified.

– Rainier Allan Ronda