Stories from the 4Ps

The alley leading to the home of Girlie Ruales in Barangay 184 in Maricaban, Pasay City is so narrow people can walk through it only in single file.

Her home is part of a two-story structure made of hollow blocks, subdivided into four. Ruales pays no rent. She said her husband, tricycle driver Danilo Vargas, inherited the dwelling from his parents.

The one-room home measures about six square meters. The entrance opens into a bed fashioned out of a sheet of plywood, which the couple shares with their only son, John Paul. To the right upon entering is a two-burner gas stove. Beside this, on the adjacent wall, is a tiled sink. There is no lavatory.

Above the bed are three items that help make life in such cramped quarters bearable: a television set, a stereo component, and on the wall, pictures of John Paul.

The boy, now 7, is in first grade, one of the beneficiaries, together with his mother, of the government’s conditional cash transfer (CCT) program for the very poor.

The CCT, called the 4Ps in this country, for Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, could help guarantee that John Paul will stay in school for the next few years.

Girlie says she uses the money – a few hundred a month – for miscellaneous school fees and milk for John Paul. For many households in this country, milk is a luxury. Once impoverished mothers run out of breast milk, they feed their babies malunggay soup instead, or rice washing.

Girlie smiles at her visitors, who are among the biggest supporters of CCT around the globe. They include World Bank Managing Director Sri Mulyani Indrawati, the renowned former finance chief of Indonesia, now in charge of WB activities in Latin America and the Caribbean, East Asia and the Pacific as well as the Middle East and North Africa; WB Country Director Bert Hofman, who managed to squeeze his large Dutch frame into the alley; and Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman, sporting a burgundy hair streak, whose department is in charge of implementing the 4Ps.

Indrawati is keen on seeing good governance lead to economic growth that works for the poor. She also oversees the Integrity Vice Presidency and Information Systems Group, the body that found collusion among bidders for $33 million worth of WB-funded road projects. As a result, seven contractors – three of them Philippine companies – and one individual were debarred last year by the WB from participating in projects funded by the bank.

The WB officials want to know if the CCT is working in the Philippines, as it has in pioneering country Brazil and several developing nations.

In Barangay 184, where living spaces are so tiny they leave little room for hope, the CCT offers relief from abject poverty and despair.

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Girlie’s alley opens out to a wider one – still not large enough to accommodate even a mini fire truck in case a blaze threatens the neighborhood, but wide enough to put on display some of the projects started by 4Ps beneficiaries.

One is a hydroponics project, where pechay and lettuce are growing in containers. A sign boasts that the micro enterprise includes vermicomposting and production of wheatgrass and biodiesel.

Near the pechay and lettuce, Marilyn Vargas proudly shows me her two-story home. Marilyn, 42, is one of the 4Ps “parent leaders” who tell other women about the CCT.

She receives a monthly stipend of P800 a month, which she can allow to accumulate and collect every three months.

In exchange, she must bring her one-year-old son Christian to a government health center every month for free weight monitoring and other checkups. When he turns 3, Christian must go to day care.

Marilyn and her husband Crisostomo, 58, a vegetable vendor, must also keep their daughter Maria Rizza, now a 14-year-old fifth grader, in school if they want to continue qualifying for the CCT.

With training from a non-government organization, Marilyn and her 4Ps group of 27 from Barangay 184 became part of “Bayanihan Banking” in October last year. Under the program, which is not compulsory for 4Ps beneficiaries, the group members put P20 each a week into a savings pool, now amounting to P11,690. The money can be used as seed capital by the group for a micro-enterprise.

Elvira Alpino, a 40-year-old housewife with three children, and the 24 others in her 4Ps group used P5,000 of the seed capital they managed to save from weekly contributions of P10 each to start a micro rice dealership. The cooperative nets P200 per 50-kilo sack of sinandomeng rice. They are now selling about two to three sacks a week.

At the Timoteo Paez Elementary School in Malibay, where 110 teachers work two shifts to handle 4,322 pupils plus 120 pre-schoolers, the WB officials grilled beneficiaries about the implementation of the 4Ps, and how it had changed their lives.

The first to answer was Josephine Manuel, an articulate 45-year-old housewife whose family has been chosen as model or “Huwarang Pamilya ng 4Ps.”

Unlike Girlie, Josephine is married to her husband Rolando, 50, a reflex therapist and part-time pastor of the Bible Baptist Church. A marriage certificate as well as children’s birth records are among the requirements for prospective 4Ps beneficiaries.

A resident of Barangay 156 along Aurora Boulevard in Pasay, Josephine was forced by poverty to quit college in her first year as a Commerce student.

The family income, which is not regular, averages P6,000 a month – barely enough for the needs of their three children. With the P1,400 they receive under the 4Ps, Josephine told me, they can afford to pay P50 a month to send their daughter Jeyreen, 6, to kindergarten. They can also afford the miscellaneous school fees of their sons Rojoef, 15, now in junior high, and Jerzem, 11, in fifth grade.

Josephine told the WB officials during the visit the other day that through the 4Ps, she also learned about planning family size: “Hindi pala dapat mag-anak nang mag-anak.”

The WB officials wanted to know how the program could be improved. A common suggestion: give beneficiaries livelihood. Soliman said a self-employment aspect would soon be included in the 4Ps.

Marilyn Vargas is thinking of pooling the Bayanihan Banking savings of an estimated 600 4Ps beneficiaries from all over Pasay City. Each beneficiary will contribute P350 as membership fee and P200 as share capital to open a bigger business: a Mang Inasal franchise.

In the blighted alleys of Pasay City, the 4Ps is making people dare to believe dreams can become reality.