PALIMBANG, SULTAN KUDARAT – Nearly a hundred health center projects were completed under a World Bank-funded project in the region as the central government stepped up social protection programs across the countryside, a government official disclosed Thursday.
Cezario Joel Espejo, regional director of Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), said that five of the total 82 health centers worth P108.67 million built by community volunteers, were finished in the last eight months through Kapit-Bisig Laban sa Kahirapan-A Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Service (Kalahi-CIDSS), a scheme implemented by the agency that helps build capacity of communities to implemented their own selected projects.
Assisted by the global financing institution World Bank, the program used community-driven development approach, which enables the recipients in targeted poor and disaster-affected municipalities to identify their own needs, collectively implement and manage solutions to these needs.
“These projects will help address the gap of health services, especially in the hardest to reach communities,” Espejo said in the recent turnover of health center in the village of Malisbong, adding around 42 thousand households have already benefited the program since 2014.
“We urge the residents to utilize and avail health services in response to the call of government to have their children vaccinated with the recent re-emergence of polio,” he added.
Kalahi-CIDSS, before it was scaled up as country’s national strategy for poverty-reduction in 2014, was chosen as one of the awardees of United States Treasury’s second annual Development Impact Honors Awards, beating over 40 other global development programs.
In Region 12, the program covers the towns of Alamada, Aleosan Bagumbayan, Banisilan, Pikit, and Carmen, in North Cotabato; Isulan, Kalamansig, Lambayong, Lebak, Lutayan, Palimbang, and Sen. Ninoy Aquino in Sultan Kudarat; and Maasim, Maitum, Glan, and Kiamba, in Sarangani. (DSWD-12 / Hilbert T. Estacion)