During the community volunteers (CVs) meeting with DSWD staff at Rawis Barangay Hall last November 20, 2013. The meeting focused on the pre-procurement activities, plans of actions and project updates.

After trainings and seminars conducted for citizen-implementers, the DSWD community-led project in Legazpi City is set to start its implementation by late December this year.

The local government of Legazpi City pilots the urban version of Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan-Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services (Kalahi-CIDSS) in Rawis and Bitano which was officially launched last year.

Kalahi-CIDSS, one of the core poverty-reduction programs by DSWD, which has originally engaged poor rural communities in the region has scaled-up its operations to reach even the poverty-stricken areas in the urban setting.

Series of consultation meetings and community investigation were conducted by the citizen-implementers or the community volunteers (CVs) as what they are called in Kalahi-CIDSS, to identify the most pressing need in their locality.

Bitano has proposed the construction of community development center, skills training on dress making and human resource development which all focuses on improving the income of the unemployed. Similarly, the people of Rawis would like to construct a livelihood center with skills training component and provision of two non-motorized boats with fishing net and six “padyak” or pedicab tricycles.

A range of capability building activities were conducted for 60 CVs from both barangays this year to prepare them for the upcoming implementation this December. The latest training conducted last September was about community finance. Subsequently, the operations and maintenance training is scheduled in December to ensure the sustainability of the community subprojects.

Josefina Radike, a store owner in Rawis and also the head of the CVs, said that the trainings were very beneficial.

“I was able to apply the basic principles of finance when handling my mini-store and I was able to value my money more because the training made me realize its importance,” she said.

Kalahi-CIDSS is not only an infrastructure-based project but the process undertaken by the CVs in honing their capacities to become productive members of the community is its primary purpose. It employs the community-driven development (CDD) approach to promote a more inclusive and participatory development to address poverty.

Currently, the CVs, barangay officials and the local government of Legazpi City have prepared pertinent documents to comply with the project’s requirements to download the funds directly to the community accounts.

The grant from World Bank for each barangay is one million pesos and the total counterpart form the local government units (community and city) amounts to Php927,500.

What is Kalahi-CIDSS?

Kalahi-CIDSS is a CDD project in the Philippines which strongly advocates the involvement of local communities in the design and implementation of development projects to address the issue of poverty in the country. CDD is a globally recognized strategy for achieving service delivery, poverty reduction, and good governance outcomes. It aims to improve local governance by employing the participation of the people in the communities in the development process.

Community residents consensually decide on what type of poverty-reduction projects they prioritize for funding based from the collective analysis of their needs. Community proposals can vary from public goods/access projects, enterprise or livelihood projects or human development projects.

According to Arnel Manongsong, a community volunteer in Rawis, he advocates the same cause of the project.

“I personally support the three main objectives of Kalahi-CIDSS: improving local governance, empowerment and poverty-reduction,” Arnel said.

Kalahi-CIDSS is one of the core social protection programs of DSWD along with Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) and Sustainable Livelihood Program (SLP).