DBP bags best CSR projects award among development banks

MUSCAT, Oman — State-owned Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) has bagged the ADFIAP Development Award for Most Outstanding Corporate Social Responsibility Project for its DBP Endowment for Education Program (DEEP) during the annual Association of Development Financial Institutions in Asia and the Pacific (ADFIAP) Awards held here last month at the Shangri-La Barr Al Jissah Resort & Spa.

DEEP is a 10-year program of DBP with a total funding of P1-billion. Through the program, DBP provides financial assistance to qualified and deserving underprivileged high school students who wish to pursue a college education. Scholars come from families with annual incomes not exceeding P150,000, and they graduated in the upper 20 percent of their high school.

“We have always taken pride in our corporate social responsibility that is embedded in the core of our mandated developmental role. And this recognition only affirms that we are on the right track in our serious efforts to make our CSR initiatives work for the benefit of more and more people in need of urgent and responsive interventions,” DBP president and chief executive officer Reynaldo G. David said.

David added that DEEP is one of DBP’s most significant CSR undertakings that taps education. Launched last year, the first batch of scholars consisted of 120 nursing students enrolled in seven partner-schools nationwide. Most of these scholars are children of farmers, laborers, drivers, teachers, housewives, electricians, mechanics, vendors, retired policemen, and soldiers.

“The impressive academic performance of the first batch of DEEP nursing scholars has definitely given us further inspiration to carry on with the program. More than 60 percent of our 120 nursing scholars achieved a grade point average of 90 percent and above for their first year performance. The scholars have, indeed, shown that given the chance and the needed assistance, they certainly can develop and make full use of their potential and set out to eventually rise above their circumstances,” David added.

ADFIAP is an organization of development banks and other financial institutions engaged in the financing of development in the Asia-Pacific region.