800 street families to have homes soon

CEBU, Philippines - At least 800 street families in Central Visayas will soon have shelters with the new project launched by the Department of Social Welfare and Development-7 and the Bidlisiw Foundation.

The project, Modified Conditional Cash Transfer (MCCT) for Homeless Street Families (HSF), aims to provide shelter and livelihood to indigenous families.

MCCT is a project under the Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Program started in July, with a budget allocation of P8.5 million.

DSWD has now listed at least 800 homeless street families from the urbanized areas in the region.

Around 550 of these families are now beneficiaries of Bidlisiw Foundation, which directly implements the project.

“DSWD is more on the monitoring and coordinating side and the foundation is implementing the project,” said Raquel Daria, Regional Monitoring and Evaluation Officer of DSWD.

Through the program, the street dwellers are provided with shelter for six months through a monthly subsidy of P4,000.

“We will not let them become independent because we will also help them have livelihood or we can even give them trainings or financial assistance for living payable within two years and we can also facilitate their employment,” Daria said.

MCCT is designed to reach out to HSF and indigenous people (IP) who are definitely poor, more vulnerable and disadvantaged but were left out in the implementation of the Pantawid Pamilya because of their being excluded in the enumeration of the National Housing Targeting System for having no family homes and for being geographically isolated and inaccessible.

The program wants to enable the HSF and IP to overcome the barriers in enjoying the government’s social protection assistance.

The family beneficiary of the program is expected to receive P500 health assistance every month while school children shall also get P300 (elementary) and P500 (high school).

Referrals from other Bidlisiw projects and community are also considered especially those families with abused and exploited children, children in conflict with the law, prostituted children and child laborers.

DSWD is confident that through the program, there will be no more homeless families in urbanized cities. (FREEMAN)