Taking on the Challenge: Fighting Poverty and Hunger Office of the President National Anti-Poverty Commission Taking on the Challenge: Fighting Poverty and Hunger The Right to Food Way Labanan ang Kahirapan !!! Good morning! DOLORES DE QUIROS-CASTILLO, CSEE, MNSA, GSC (PAR) NAPC Assistant Secretary

Key Areas for Presentation § Our Target: the Poor and Reducing Poverty and Hunger § Government Responses: Winning the War Against Poverty and Hunger: § Our Stakes and Taking On the Challenges Ahead

Critical Questions to Answer What services do they need? Who are the poor? Why are they poor? With the growing responsibility of government to promote conditions that assure better basic services for the poor, it has become necessary to determine—with absolute precision—where the poor are, why they are poor, and what services they require. For several years, varying estimates of the extent of poverty in the Philippines have been made. Valuable as some of these estimates may be, they do not provide local governments with sufficient and up-to-date factual data on which to base accurate interventions. The Philippine government’s current poverty monitoring system relies largely on a few surveys on household income, expenditure and health. These are, by their nature, too costly to be frequently undertaken. They are, moreover, conducted at different time periods—making it impossible to obtain a comprehensive profile of the poverty and health situation at specific points in time. It is for these reasons that NAPC has embarked on an endeavor to ensure the nationwide use of the Community-Based Monitoring System or CBMS. What services do they need?

WHO ARE THE POOR ? Republic Act No. 8425 - Social Reform and Poverty Alleviation Act defines: The poor refers to individuals and families whose incomes fall below the official poverty threshold as defined by the government and/or cannot afford to provide in a sustained manner for their minimum basic needs for food, health, education, housing, and other social amenities of life.

Government Responses and Current Priorities: Labanan ang Kahirapan At this juncture, let me share to you what responses were initiated by our government and the current priorities to ensure and keep us on track in reducing poverty and pulling our poor from the quagmire of poverty. In 2004, PGMA defined the government’s priorities to ensuring the overarching goals of poverty reduction, equity and economic growth. All these are enshrined in the Medium Term Philippine Development Plan (2004-2010). Two years ago, our Administration defined in more certain terms priorities toward accelerating the accomplishment of our defined goals. The momentum was further revved up by the implementation of the Accelerated Hunger Mitigation Program, which was earlier explained by my partner, Exec Dir. Flores of NNC. As you can glean from her presentation, the bulk of government’s current and future programs and projects are wholistic in approach and are designed to respond to the causes of hunger, while hitting core facets of poverty with aggressive support given to micro-, small-, and medium-enterprise development, microfinance, livelihood and job generation.

HOW TO FIGHT POVERTY? Social Reform and Poverty Alleviation Act (RA 8425) - A landmark law that created NAPC Section 2, No. 4 (e) states that “The social reform agenda shall address the fight against poverty through a multi-dimensional and cross-sectoral approach which recognizes and respects the core values, cultural integrity, and spiritual diversity of target sectors and communities;

ENHANCED KALAHI “HAPPIER” OPERATIONAL FRAMEWORK PROPOSED OPERATIONAL FRAMEWORK ENHANCED KALAHI “HAPPIER” OPERATIONAL FRAMEWORK VISION OPERATIONS Poverty Incidence reduced by half in 2010 2.Population Growth Rate of 1.9% by 2010 High environmental sustainability by 2015 ANCHORS AGENDA GOALS H U M A N R I G T S D E O G E N D R I M S O Poverty Reduction Population Management Economic Dimensions Environment Sustainability Enhancing Availment of Public Goods & Services Social Protection, Peace & Order & Security STRATEGIES Enhancing Resources Capacities Promoting Market Competitiveness Participatory Governance Social/ Cultural Dimensions Millennium Development Goals Medium Term Development Plan + Institutional Arrangement Monitoring & Evaluation Advocacy/ IEC Policies Programs In recognizing poverty as multi-dimensional, our strategies are anchored on several dimensions, namely: economic, social, political and governance, ecological and gender dimension as well as human rights dimension. Economic Dimension aims to spur economic growth and create jobs would assure sociopolitical stability and good stewardship of resources; Social Dimension ensures that the poor have the necessary skills to benefit from existing interventions or the poor use their skills in participating in economic activities and making basic services accessible to the poor; Political & Governance Dimension seeks to provide political stability in order to protect the poor from the repercussions of divisiveness, insurgency and partisan politics; Ecological Dimension emphasizes on the protection of the environment and vigorous enforcement of environmental laws; Gender Dimension is mainstreamed under the four major anchors to recognize the need to consider gender issues in vision setting and in the operations level Human rights dimension promotes the rights-based approach. As earlier mentioned, these strategy framework is anchored on the context of the MDGs and the MTPDP. Under the operational frame, there are three over-all goals that pursues the poverty reduction, population and environmental targets. The main drivers are clustered as supply and demand. On the demand side, we must focus on the basic sectors which are basically the poor and vulnerable households/individuals. On the supply side, we tackle the interplay of the key stakeholders such as the various national government agencies, the local government units and the civil society organizations, including the business/private sector. The holistic mechanisms require policies, programs, institutional arrangement, monitoring and evaluation and advocacy and social marketing. Political and Governance Dimensions MECHANISM MECHANISM NATIONAL / PAPR LGU / LPRAP Ecological/Environ-mental Dimensions NGAs LGUs CSOs Private Sector BASIC SECTORS (Poor/vulnerable) LGUs DRIVERS SUPPLY SUPPLY DEMAND

PARTICIPATORY GOVERNANCE ENHANCED KALAHI “HAPPIER” Strategies CURRENT STRATEGY ENHANCED POVERTY REDUCTION STRATEGY ENHANCING RESOURCES CAPACITIES Land Resources Improvement/ Utilization Labor Quality Improvement Capital Augmentation Technology Entrepreneurship Improvement ASSET REFORM PROMOTING MARKET COMPETITIVENESS HUMAN DEVELOPMENT SERVICES Therefore in enhancing our interventions, we need to refocus by making our PAPs in consonance with the end goals of poverty reduction and hunger mitigation not taken as solely but interdependently. It is important that we beyond asset reform by harnessing the full potentials of all the resources, like the land, and facilities, including the poor people that are cultivating the lands, and others. Parallel strategies on asset reform should now be staged such as improving the quality of labor and providing opportunities for the poor to engage in enterprise that are backed by microfinancing and credit. In addition, investments in research and development on new technologies should be able to improve productivity and must take into consideration the stock of knowledge of the target households. Promoting Market Competitiveness anticipates a scenario where high production particularly in the agriculture sector is achieved. The poor must not remain less competitive in the world market. Enhancing Availment of Public Goods and Services – this enhanced strategy aims to minimize transaction costs to target poor households in order for them to be able to increase the rate of availment of the goods and services. For example, health and education services are availed of by poor households only when the costs of accessing them is relatively small. Once the basic services are made accessible to the poor, then they are also equipped with the skills to find livelihood means or job employment. The last two strategies, which are participatory governance and social protection would be mainstreamed with the three mentioned strategies. For the last strategy, peace and order and security is now explicitly included with the social protection. ENHANCING AVAILMENT OF PUBLIC GOODS AND SERVICES LIVELIHOOD AND EMPLOYMENT PARTICIPATORY GOVERNANCE SOCIAL PROTECTION SOCIAL PROTECTION INCLUDING PEACE AND ORDER, AND SECURITY

OPERATIONAL NEXUSES: OUR FIGHTING TARGETS POVERTY POVERTY INCIDENCE REDUCED FROM 34% BY HALF OR AT LEAST 20% BY 2010 HUNGER POPULATION POPULATION GROWTH RATE REDUCED FROM 2.3 TO 1.9 BY 2010 ENVIRONMENT HIGH ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY BY 2015

Accelerated Hunger Mitigation Program Unavailable or insufficient food to eat HUNGER No money to buy food Hunger Mitigation Measures Supply Side Demand Side Increase Food Production Enhance efficiency of logistics & food delivery Put more money in poor people’s pockets Promote good nutrition Manage population Productivity programs including livestock, crops, marine regeneration (mangrove and coastal fishery development), farm family (Gulayan ng Masa) and irrigation - DA, DENR, NIA a) Barangay Food Terminal & Tindahan Natin – NFA, DSWD b) Ports (RORO)-maximum use of private ports, shipping - DOTC/PPA c) Farm to market roads –DPWH, DA, DAR d) Efficient local transport – LGUs/Leagues of P/C/M/B e) Food for School Program- DepED,DSWD f) Creation of NGO net-work to support feeding programs - DSWD g) Community tradeable rice certificates - NFA a) Improve productivity in coconut areas (coconut coir, virgin coconut oil & other value-adding products; coconet production) – DA, PCA, CIIF b) More aggressive micro-financing – PCFC, LBP, DSWD c) Maximize employment opportunities in construction & maintenance of farm-to-market roads, irrigation and roadside maintenance – DPWH, MMDA,PNP d) Aggressive training – TESDA, DOLE, DSWD e) Upland land distribution (4M ha for jatropha, rubber) – DAR a) Conduct social marketing –DOH, NNC/ LGUs b) Promote exclusive breastfeeding, appropriate complementary feeding, and increased consumption of vegetables – DOH/ LGUs c) Nutrition education in schools –DepED Responsible Parenthood – POPCOM / LGUs / ULAP / Leagues of P/C/M/B The Accelerated Hunger Mitigation Program Framework is one of the major program of PGMA Administration responsive to the call on “8 by 2008” As we all know, hunger is an indicator of poverty, which may be due to (1) unavailable or insufficient food to eat; and /or (2) no money to buy food. It is a multi-dimensional and complex phenomena, and, therefore, should be addressed in a holistic manner. This means that in order to be effective, the program should address all factors and dimensions of hunger. Broadly, we want to address hunger both on the aspect of supply or the unavailability or insufficiency of food to eat, and on the aspect of demand or the inability to buy food. To address unavailability or insufficiency of food, we need to produce more food through various programs of DA, DENR, among others. We also need to enhance efficiency of logistics and food delivery through Barangay Food Terminal and Tindahan Natin, construction of ports and farm to market roads, enhancement of the FSP and other feeding programs, among others. To address the inability to buy food due to no or low income, we need to improve / provide employment opportunities for the poor people; put up income generating activities as well as train them to improve their employability and productivity. We also need to educate our people to eat the right kind of food for proper nutrition. Moreover, we need to manage population since family size is highly correlated with poverty and hunger. Since the delivery of reproductive health services is already devolved, we need the support of LGUs in managing our population growth.

Catalyzing CONVERGENCE, HARMONIZATION AND SYNCHRONIZATION

Key Components and Goals POLICY ADVOCACY AND POLICY REFORM REDUCED POVERTY & HUNGER IMPROVED GOVERNANCE EMPOWERED COMMUNITIES CONVERGENT PROGRAM/SERVICE DELIVERY PEOPLE/INSTITUTIONAL BUILDING- CAPABILITY DEV In effect, the KALAHI zeroes in on policy ADVOCACY and policy REFORM, CONVERGENT service delivery, CAPABILITY BUILDING, and social marketing. RESOURCES MOB & SOCIAL MARKETING

OUR COMMON CHALLENGES Labanan ang Kahirapan! Converge & ensure unity in directions and efforts Harmonize & synchronize on GROUNDING initiatives appropriate to LOCAL conditions, while being responsive to national/global needs and dynamics Focus and accelerate initiatives Nonetheless, our daily battles and the small victories must be pursued unrelentlessly. Ahead are challenges we must work on. (read slide)

OUR COMMON CHALLENGES Build capacities and enhance skills of Labanan ang Kahirapan! OUR COMMON CHALLENGES Build capacities and enhance skills of poor and key stakeholders, to sustainably develop/manage resources Strengthen and expand partnerships expand networks

Magkapit-bisig at mag- ugnayan National Anti-Poverty Commission Labanan ang kahirapan! That’s all, Madam President. Thank you and good day! MARAMING SALAMAT PO! National Anti-Poverty Commission