Butuan City – The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) conferred to fifty-six (56) Local Government Units (LGUs) the guidelines for the implementation of Grassroots Participatory Budgeting Projects (GPB) on March 27, 2014 at LJ Mega Convention Hall, Butuan City.
GPB formerly called Bottom-up Budgeting (BUB) is an approach to preparing the budget proposal of agencies, taking into consideration the development needs of cities/municipalities as identified in their respective local poverty reduction action plans that shall be formulated with strong participation of basic sector organizations and other civil society organizations.
Core Shelter Assistance, Road Opening, Construction of River Dike, Acquisition of Rescue Boats, Evacuation Centers, Supplemental Feeding Program and Social Pension for Indigent Senior Citizens are some of the projects that will be funded by GPB.
Jean Paul S. Parajes, GPB Regional Focal and Planning Officer, discussed and expounded the LGU Eligibility Assessment and orientation on GPB.
DSWD Focal Persons for poverty reduction programs namely: Elsa P. Montemor, Regional Project Coordinator of KALAHI-CIDSS; Aldie Mae Andoy, Protective Service Focal; and Marvin F. Tubo, SLP Special Projects Focal elucidated the GPB 2013 Implementation Updates. Regional Focal Person of Listahanan, Dante S. Rosales, shared the usefulness of Listahanan the database of poor families and stirred to ink MOA and to utilize the data so that the proposed projects will go to the right beneficiaries of the program.
DSWD Accountant III Pio V. Japitana presented the status of LGU Cash Advances.
Assistant Regional Director for Administration, Nerisa T. Murih, gave an encouragement message to the participants. “Caraga is the first region to have GPB Projects completed in 2013; there are 232,301 poor households identified through the Listahanan database which really need our help. I encourage and inspire you more to implement all the proposed projects. Our region has 180 Million allocated funds for 2014. I hope the poorest of the poor will benefit this Social Welfare Development (SWD) projects and services,” Murih said.
“I also thanked the Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in helping us through the monitoring and proactive in planning from designing up to the implementation of the projects,” Murih added.
Open Forum capsulized the activity of which issues and concerns were raised by the participants and were answered by the DSWD Focal Persons. ### Social Marketing Unit (SMU)/Maria Cecilia N. Sosas.
