Quezon City- In line with the Mayors’ Forum held last February 2015 which has strengthened the commitment of the LGUs to Kalahi CIDSS, the Department of Social Welfare and Development IV- MiMaRoPa conducted the Community Driven Development (CDD) Workshop for LGUs cum Local Chief Executives Forum Last October 20 to 24, 2015 at Great Eastern Hotel in Quezon City.

With the theme MiMaRoPa: the destination of choice, the conference had gathered 128 participants composed of 47 Community Volunteers (CV), 47 Municipal Coordinating Team (MCT) members, 28 Local Chief Executives (LCE) and six LCE representatives across MiMaRoPa to share their experiences, best practices, challenges, and future plans regarding the implementation of Kalahi CIDSS in their area and how these can help the region achieve its goal as the destination of choice.

In addition, this also paved the way for the different LGUs to share their successes and challenges in mainstreaming the CDD approach and embedding it into their governance strategy.

The richness of the discussions has been achieved by splitting the participants into different sessions separating the LCEs, the MCTs and LCE representatives, and the CVs.

The Session 1b participants from the municipalities of Paluan, Mamburao, Cuyo, Aborlan, and Busuanga were selected to share to their co-MCTs and LCE representatives the Best Practices in Engaging Participation of Marginalized Groups: Women and IP Groups/ICC coupled with the experiences, challenges and recommendations their areas had undergone in engaging in these marginalized groups.

On the other hand, the Community Volunteers in Session 1a from the municipalities of San Teodoro, Cajidiocan, Calintaan, and Taytay also shared with their co-volunteers the effective approaches to Community Mobilization and Facilitation based on their experiences in partaking to Kalahi CIDSS.

Simultaneously, the LCEs had an Executive Meeting with Director Wilma Naviamos in which they had discussed the implementation of the DSWD programs in their respective areas.

On the third day, the LCEs of Calintaan, Sablayan, Gloria, Torrijos, Looc in Romblon, and Lubang, shared their implementation experiences, challenges and best practices in implementing CDD. These municipalities were identified earlier to be one of the best performing areas in terms of the lushness of their experiences in implementing the Kalahi CIDSS.

On the afternoon, the participants had listened to the discussions of the partner agencies of DSWD MiMaRoPa such as NCIP, DILG, DENR, and NEDA.

Significant events had also happened in the conference as the LCEs had signed the Technical Assistance and Resource Augmentation (TARA) plan for the achievement of the Strategic Goal number 3 of the Department which is “to increase the number of provinces with majority of the municipalities/cities having a fully functioning Local Social Welfare Development Offices to 40 by 2016”.

Blessings also showered in on the third day of the conference because the municipalities of Sablayan, Looc, Gloria, Lubang, Calatrava, Lubang and Alcantara signed a Memorandum of Agreement for the incentive grant given to their areas by the Kalahi CIDSS Millennium Challenge Corporation.

The feedback of the participants from their spoken delight about the learning sessions, to the letters they had given to the facilitators as a proof on how they had a meaningful exchange of thoughts, techniques, and stories which bind them together towards the achievement of the goal of the conference which is to imbibe and fully embrace the CDD process in their communities.

The conference ended by the participants’ pledge of commitment by signing their names and plastering their thumb marks on the commitment tree, symbolizing their utmost dedication in adopting and mainstreaming CDD as well as being champions of change in their communities. ###