Mandaluyong City – Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services-National Community-Driven Development Program (KALAHI CIDSS-NCDDP), one of the major poverty alleviation programs of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) recently hit big during the Agency’s 1st Scorecard Summit, held on November 25-27 in this city.

The Scorecard Summit is an annual event that is intended to serve as an avenue to recognize and exchange good and innovative ideas and practices, particularly in strategy execution to help the DSWD achieve its strategic goals: to improve the well-being of 2.3 million families covered by Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, the conditional cash transfer program of the Agency; to increase the number of Listahanan-identified poor families covered by at least two social welfare and development programs and services from 3.9 to 5.2 million by 2016; and, to increase the number of cities and municipalities having a fully-functioning local social welfare and development office to 40 provinces by 2016.

All three entries of KALAHI CIDSS-NCDDP gained a spot in the Scorecard Summit.

The program’s “e-RFR na iyan!” presentation was awarded first place under “Fresh Tweaks”, a category which refers to “proposed ideas that have not yet been tested but found to be logical and practical”.

The presentation “e-RFR na iyan!” pertains to the electronic Request for Funds Release (e-RFR) system that KALAHI CIDSS-NCDDP will utilize to enable an error-free and faster release of funds at the community level for their sub-project implementation.

As a community-driven development program, KALAHI CIDSS-NCDDP puts power back in the hands of the people by allowing them to identify and implement sub-projects they need to address their community’s most pressing needs, as well as manage the funds they will be utilizing to implement the said sub-project.

The e-RFR will not only hasten the process of funds release to communities, it will also prevent the co-mingling of funds, as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, the fund sources of the program, prohibit this.

The two other presentations from KALAHI CIDSS-NCDDP were “ICEDROP Kayo Diyan!”, which was awarded 2nd place under Fresh Tweaks, and “Disaster response does not mean disastrous response”, which garnered 3rd place under the Good Practices category.

The former refers to Intervening Crisis and Emergency Disaster Response Operations Procedures (ICEDROP), the system KALAHI CIDSS-NCDDP developed so that it can implement faster and respond more effectively to the needs of ‘Yolanda’-affected municipalities.

KALAHI CIDSS-NCDDP was identified as one of the post-disaster recovery and rehabilitation programs following ‘Yolanda’, said to be the strongest disaster to hit the world. Out of its 847 target communities, 554 were affected by the typhoon.

The latter entry is also ‘Yolanda’-related, being a presentation that showed the coordination work that the KALAHI CIDSS-NCDDP used in serving as one of the response teams in Eastern Visayas following the typhoon.

The second place for Fresh Tweaks went to the Human Resource Development Bureau’s entry on the Build and Recognize the Achievement and Value the Excellence (BRAVE) Awards, which proposes the recognition of the efforts made by Memorandum of Agreement workers of the DSWD.

KALAHI CIDSS-NCDDP National Program Manager Chi Redaja thanked the Office of Strategy Management (OSM), which spearheaded the activity, for recognizing the innovations made by the program.

“These will serve as an inspiration for us to continue to develop more innovations in KALAHI CIDSS-NCDDP”, she said.
Meanwhile, the 1st place for Good Practices goes to DSWD Field Office from the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) for their Social Pension for Indigent Senior Citizens-Information System (SPIC-IS), which ensures the efficiency in the delivery of the social pension stipend received by senior citizens through DSWD.

Second place went to DSWD Field Office III for its Family Scorecard (FSC), a case management tool designed to help survival-level Pantawid Pamilya families, classified as the poorest of the poor, identify the areas that they need to develop to improve the status of their household.

Tied with KALAHI CIDSS-NCDDP on 3rd place for the Good Practices category is the “Barangay Action Committee” entry of DSWD Regional Office II, which refers to the partnership of DSWD with barangay officials to improve the compliance rate of Pantawid Pamilya beneficiaries within the region.

Each entry was presented and defended before a panel of judges, which was composed of DSWD Assistant Secretary Javier Jimenez, Institute for Solidarity in Asia (ISA) Executive Director Christian Zaens, and National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) Supervising Economic Development Specialist April Mendoza.

Mendoza congratulated the presenters on their presentations, saying that the innovations will contribute to improving service delivery to the clients of the DSWD. ###