Albay has signed up to pilot an innovative, microcredit and food production program coordinated by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to help make beneficiaries of the conditional cash transfers (CCT) or 4PS self-reliant by 2014.
Now referred to as “the modified CCT,” the program aims to wipe out food shortage and malnutrition in the countryside, when it spreads to non-CCT beneficiaries and preserves the gains of the Millennium Development Goals, particularly on poverty and malnutrition.
Albay Gov. Joey Salceda expressed optimism about the program since repayment in previous areas where it was tested had reached 300 percent. Its pilot areas in the province were barangays Budiao and Pinit, in Daraga town and Ligao City, respectively.
Its first batch of participant households were required to build their own backyard organic fertilizer pits and were to be provided seedlings for a small vegetable garden and fruit trees, as well as a pair of chickens to start an egg-laying backyard venture.
After getting their shares of the harvest, the beneficiaries will pay their loans double, not in cash, but also in the form of seedlings and fertilizers, which will then be redistributed to the next batch of households. The scheme aims to generate a multiplier effect of credit repayment and production. The system is expected to radiate to neighboring communities and ultimately the entire province.
Each barangay should also come out with a banner fruit and vegetable garden, an organic fertilizer factory and a 200-head native chicken multiplication facility.
Salceda recently signed the memorandum of agreement for the project with the DSWD at the Climate Change Academy of the Bicol University. Albay pledged P1.8 million to complement the P1.3 million seed money provided by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC).
The project is titled “Expanding the Food-Base and Income-Base in Target Barangays in Calamity Prone Municipalities in Bicol.” The MoA was also signed by DSWD Secretary Dinky Soliman, Fernando Antolin of UNDP, director Florencia Casanova Dorotan of NAPC, Dr. Ponciano Batugal of the Farmers’ Community Development Foundation International, and Assistant Health Secretary Bernardita Flores, executive director of the National Nutrition Council.
The CCT is expected to end by 2014 after five years of serving about 5.2 million households throughout the country. In Albay alone, 62,000 families were enrolled in the program. Soliman said the government hopes to make CCT beneficiaries self-reliant through the microcredit food production program.
Salceda had requested that the program be expanded to Polangui, Santo Domingo and Camalig towns, with at least two pilot barangays each. It will be managed by the Albay Millennium Development Goal Office.
He said the project will also boost community resiliency against disasters and serve as buffer against rising food prices and the onslaught of climate change. It espouses the ideals of Accelerated Hunger Mitigation Program, the Aquino government’s anti-poverty blueprint.