The Local Government of Dalaguete, Cebu wins the first Gawad Listahanan award given by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).

Dalaguete competed under the Municipal Government Category with other seven national finalists like Cuenca, Batangas; Jaen, Nueva Ecija; Pandan, Catanduanez; Cabatuan, Ilo-Ilo; Aparri, Cagayan; Malalag, Davao del Sur; and Asuncion, Davao del Norte.

Gawad Listahanan is an award conferred by the DSWD to local government units (LGUs) that have registered the most number of beneficiaries of their locally-funded programs in the Listahanan database of poor families.

The awarding ceremony will be done on January 29, 2015 at the DSWD Central Office in Quezon City in time of DSWD’s 64th Founding Anniversary.

The Municipality of Dalaguete’s entry is the locally-funded program called Local Government Institutional Support Services for Transformation Advancement or LISSTA.

The LISSTA program provides educational assistance like school supplies, scholarship grant and provision of authorized school contribution to Listahanan identified-poor students in elementary and high school.

A total of 4,323 students from different barangays in Dalaguete have benefited under this program.

“While various departments of the Municipal Government of Dalaguete such as the Municipal Agriculture and Natural Resources Office (MANRO), Municipal Social Welfare and Development Office (MSWDO) and Community Development Unit (COMDEV) has its own list of target families, the Listahanan is the most comprehensive list of vulnerable families in the municipality,” Dalaguete Mayor Ronald Allan Cesante said.

“As such, we formulated the LISSTA program for focused government intervention, beginning with support to education and skills training. As the LISSTA program identifies qualified beneficiaries at the school level, we can easily validate their economic status through the Listahanan. Hence, we can do away with subjective selection of beneficiaries,” Cesante underscored.

The program also provides subsidy to youth enrolled at their Dalaguete Skills Training and Resource (STAR) Center.

“The Listahanan provides us with fast and efficient validation of LISSTA beneficiaries. Since it provided us with all the information, we can easily check what other social welfare interventions we can initiate,” Cesante added.

“LISSTA, using our flagship program “SILAW sa Paglaum” (Ray of Hope) modalities as provider of baseline data, although a work in progress, we believe, will provide a platform for long term engagement by the municipal government to its most needy constituents,” Cesante emphasized. ###

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