Some 400 poor folks of Mayorga town in Leyte province recently completed this summer a four – day skills training, ranging from massage therapy, driving, food processing, motorcycle/small engine servicing, fish processing and preservation, and horticulture, courtesy of the municipal government under Mayor Valente Adolfo. The local government unit poured in an amount of Php 150, 000.00 for this purpose, with the TESDA – Calubian National Vocational School lending support in the training.

In its closing program, Virginia Idano, chief of the Protective Services Unit of the DSWD Field Office Eight, said in her speech that the said recipients of the training program were identified by her agency through its National Household Targeting System for Poverty Reduction (NHTS-PR) database. The NHTS-PR is a system of identifying who and where the poor families are in the country, and this includes firming up of a unified, functional, objective and transparent targeting system for the poor who are beneficiaries of social protection programs.

She revealed that 246 of the participants who finished training on Horticulture are beneficiaries of the Department’s PANTAWID PAMILYANG PILIPINO (PANTAWID PAMILYA) Program. PANTAWID PAMILYA is a poverty reduction and social development strategy of the national government that provides conditional cash grants to extremely poor households to improve their health, nutrition and education particularly of children aged 0-14.

These beneficiaries are also to benefit the DSWD’s Cash-for-Work/Training Program, enabling them to earn Php 219 per day for the four days of training they underwent, and seven days of working on their nursery in their respective barangays. They will each receive a total of Php 2, 409.00 for the whole period of the program.

The Cash-for-Training/Work Program is one measure of the Department in helping augment the income of the poor, particularly small – scale farmers and fisherfolk, in exchange of the training and work they rendered. Work may be in the form of disaster preparedness and mitigation as well as rehabilitation activities for community structures/facilities, or greening/agricultural production endeavors.

In same program, Mayor Adolfo, for his part, thanked the DSWD for the many contributions it has extended for the economic upliftment of the poor townsfolk. He also appealed to the beneficiaries to put into practice what they have learned.