THE POWER OF COMMUNITY AGAINST POVERTY TRUE
TRUE to its acronym, Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan – Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services, KALAHI-CIDSS empowered the community beneficiaries and highlighted the power of unity against poverty.
“A key ingredient in the implementation of KALAHICIDSS is the active participation of the members of the community themselves, through a process called the community empowerment activity cycle,” says Social Welfare and Development Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman. “The people themselves determine the most urgent problems that confront them.”
In 2011, Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) took to the Philippines its global fight against poverty through a different route called community-driven development. Millennium Challenge Account – Philippines (MCA-P), the accountable entity in the Philippines mandated to manage the MCC grant, made sure the funds were spent to the intended beneficiaries.
With a total budget of $132 million, KALAHI-CIDSS MCC assisted six regions, 24 provinces, 160 municipalities, and 3,760 barangays and benefitted 965,266 households. The regions included Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR), Region IV-B MIMAROPA, Region V-Bicol, Region VI-Western Visayas, Region VII-Central Visayas, and Region VIII-Eastern Visayas.
But KALAHI-CIDSS wasn’t a dole-out program; it’s a training, design, implementation, and monitoring program rolled into one. It enabled community members to actively participate in the process of identification, planning, implementation, operation, and maintenance of the sub-projects.
There were 3,984 sub-projects under the projects, whose top 10 included road (981), school building (558), footpath/access trail (459), water system (386), drainage canal (335), day care center (274), health station (210), foot/small bridge (115), sanitation/solid waste management facilities (91), and soil protection/ riprap (90).
One example of a sub-project is the improvement of a farm-tomarket road from Sitio Kalsada to Sitio Libis in Cabra, a small remote island barangay in Lubang Island, Occidental Mindoro. What once was a very narrow path that made travel difficult is now putting a smile on the faces of students on their way to school, and farmers who need to transport produce and supplies.
From identifying the most urgent problems, the people themselves make proposals for the project. They plan what to do, and present those plans in the municipal assembly to go through a voting process. “All are present, all the barangays,” Soliman continues. “What I think is an important ingredient in the process is the ownership of the project itself. It is so engraved in the community because people really work on it together.”
Project beneficiaries have three cycles of one year per cycle to complete capacity building activities, actual project construction, and project management. Communities with good track record after three cycles graduate to another level called Makamasang Tugon, where there is gradual transfer of responsibilities to participating municipal governments.
“What we have learned in the years before, we applied in the MCC-MCA-P partnership,” Soliman says. “Inputs such as monitoring and evaluation that came in from other partners of MCC have also helped us enhance what we have been doing.”
She singles out the inputs on gender. Among the refinements of the best practices was the creation of gender staff positions and genderfocused activities, including the provision of a Gender Incentive Grant.
“MCA-P has been able to support our efforts to develop a manual that made the process genderconscious and gender-responsive. Another input is working on themes, especially themes on standards, and on the environment, particularly because of the impacts climate change brought when Yolanda happened in the Philippines.”