Tacloban City- The Community –driven development (CDD) program implemented by the Department of Social Welfare and Development known as Kapit-Bisig Laban saKahirapan- Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services (Kalahi-CIDSS) is now readying for the scaling up of the so-called National Community Driven Program (NCDDP).

Currently, the Kalahi-CIDSS Program Management Office of Region VIII is conducting an orientation on the process of enrolment of Local Government Units for NCDDP. The regional office now doubles the time and effortas it will cover 136 municipalities which is the largest coverage in the whole Philippines by region for NCDDP.

The 136 municipalitiesare categorized into two: (1) the “177”, which are non-poor andYolanda-affected municipalities; and (2) the “377”, or the poor and Yolanda affected municipalities.  In the region, there are 21 municipalities belonging to “117” category and 115 municipalities under the “377” category.

The large coverage also means massive hiring of staff to implement NCDDP in the 136 areas. In a nutshell, the Field Office VIII needs to hire and/or re-hire 45 Regional Program Management Office (RPMO) staff, 68 Sub- RPMO Staff and 1, 763 Area Coordinating Team staff.

Each municipality needs one Area Coordinator; every 25 barangays of each municipality need one Deputy Area Coordinator and one Municipal Financial Analyst; and every three barangays,one Community Facilitator.

The NCDDP is the scaling up of the Kalahi-CIDSS, one of the national government’s flagship programs for poverty reduction. NCDDP will use CDD approach to address poverty. Using this strategy will empower ordinary citizens to actively and directly participate in local governance by identifying their own community needs, planning, implementing, and monitoring projects to address local poverty issues collectively.

The CDD strategy was used and proven effective by the Kalahi-CIDSS in its past 11 years of implementation. It puts power back in the hands the people by giving them the opportunity to make informed decisions on locally identified options for development, and manage resources to implement sub-projects that address the needs identified by the communities themselves.

Kalahi CIDSS- NCDDP will officially be launched sometime on the midyear of 2014.