Legazpi City—The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Field Office 5 hosted a three-day national project concept formulation on March 11-14, 2015 at Hotel St. Ellis to support one of the agency’s poverty reduction programs, Kapit-bisig Laban sa Kahirapan-Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services (Kalahi-CIDSS).

Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AECID), one of the development partners of DSWD, announced that they will be funding a new project, which will focus on improved local governance and disaster risk reduction and management (DRRM), both of which are key thematic areas of Kalahi-CIDSS.

The national project concept formulation workshop aims to identify best practices in local governance that addresses DRRM schemes and requirements, articulate possible intervention areas given the current implementation arrangements of Kalahi-CIDSS, and formulate a project concept for possible funding through Spanish assistance grant.

Meanwhile, Kalahi-CIDSS Deputy National Program Manager for Technical Support Services Division (TSSD) Jojo Aguilar discussed the DRRM approaches and thrusts of the program.

Mercedes Bareas of AECID also presented the design of its new development assistance program.

The activity was attended by officials from AECID, headed by Senior Program Manager for Social Development Mercedes Bareas, and DSWD officials from the national and regional offices.

Kalahi-CIDSS employs community-driven development (CDD) approach that gives ordinary residents the opportunity to make informed decisions on locally identified options for development and manage resources to implement community projects that address needs identified by communities themselves.

AECID had previously funded community projects in Bicol under PODER, a modality of Kalahi-CIDSS, since 2005. Through this project, the region was able to implement …

The latest partnership between AECID and DSWD in Bicol was Local Empowerment and Development for Good Governance (LEADGOV) which focused in providing capacity building trainings to two local government units (LGUs) namely, San Pascual and Minalabac, for improved governance and development planning.